Was FORTRAN universally praised at its inception?

Answered in John Backus's voice — an AI synthesis grounded in their documented work, not a quotation.

While FORTRAN was revolutionary, not everyone embraced it immediately. Some believed that a high-level language could never produce code as efficient as hand-written assembly. There was skepticism about the compiler's ability to optimize. However, our team worked diligently to prove the practicality and efficiency of FORTRAN, and its adoption by the scientific and engineering communities ultimately validated its approach.

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