FORTRAN was a very important language for me.

Growing up on early micros, with BASIC, my father had Fortran for the TRS-80.

I took a stab at learning it, but the documentation was reference for calling the compiler, not so much learning the language. And when I found a FORTRAN book, it was quite dated and talking about things like tapes and punches and what not.

So, that effort stalled.

But, my first quarter in college, I took a FORTRAN (77) class. FORTRAN taught on the schools CDC Cyber mainframe.

This was quite a change from 8-bit PET BASIC.

But, most importantly, it was exposure to much of the same concept that an 8-bit computer has, but from a different tact.

This gave me more of a way to view things from a higher level, since I had to make them fit the two different views of how FORTRAN looked at things, how the Cyber presented things, and how BASIC and the PET were "same thing only different".

It also gave me access to a multi-user system, and all of the interesting capabilities it offers.

I remember when they put in their first lab of PCs, and how they started teaching folks Turbo Pascal on micro computers, and I just felt that the users were missing out on a bigger world. "Anyone" can access a PC or micro computer at home, but mainframe or multi user mini access, not so much. It's just a much bigger world out there, and we tend to baby duck what we first see.

Different world today, never had to use FORTRAN professionally, but I am most grateful for the experience of learning it and its environment. Very powerful medium for broader learning.

Also FORTRAN was the only notable computer thing I had "taught" to me (outside of my 20 minute introduction to BASIC by my high school teacher), pretty much everything else I self learned from books and such, even knowing the bulk of it before taking classes in school.