Fortran
Fortran (Formula Translation) is a high-level, general-purpose programming language originally developed in the 1950s for scientific and engineering computations. It is particularly known for its efficiency in numerical computing, with built-in support for arrays and mathematical operations, and has evolved through standards like Fortran 77, Fortran 90/95, Fortran 2003, and Fortran 2018 to include modern features such as object-oriented programming and parallel computing.
Developers should learn Fortran when working in fields that require high-performance numerical simulations, such as computational physics, climate modeling, engineering analysis, and financial modeling, due to its optimized compilers and legacy codebases. It is especially valuable for maintaining and extending existing scientific software, where its array-handling capabilities and mathematical libraries (e.g., BLAS, LAPACK) provide significant performance advantages over other languages.