FORTRAN

FORTRAN remains the bedrock of scientific computing, outperforming #5 C++ in legacy numerical stability by decades. Created by John Backus and IBM in 1957 as the world's first high-level programming language, it made algorithmic expression accessible without assembly code. Today, FORTRAN powers over 75% of weather modeling systems and is still used in aerospace engineering for trajectory calculations. Its compiled code runs 30% faster than the typical rival for matrix operations, a key reason it persists in computational physics 65 years later. FORTRAN's direct lineage to modern languages like Python's NumPy library highlights its enduring influence on data-intensive fields.