I can certainly verify this. Look no further than Nastran [1] which is ubiquitous in the aeronautical / aerospace industry. Using fixed width fields isn't even uncommon--column edit and a few clever regular expressions go a LONG way. Even newer software [2] follows this paradigm, and I think with good reason. Mechanical engineers, as they insist on frequently reminding me, are NOT computer scientists. Nastran bulk data operates like a very tangible, physical-ish relational database free from some of the more advanced abstractions of more modern languages.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nastran#Software_architecture 2. http://www.zonatech.com/ZAERO.htm