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Plankalkul
First appeared in 1948 and was made by Konrad Zuse. It was designed for engineering purposes, so it had a LOT of math and algorithms to it. Its name means “Plan Calculus”. -
Period: to
History of Programming Languages
Notice* The only part of the date that is correct is the year. -
Fortran
First appeared in 1957, and was developed by John Backus and the company IBM (International Business Machines). Its main use was math and science calculations, and was a widespread tool in the engineering field at the time. Its name is derived from Formula Translating System. -
MATH-MATIC
First appeared in 1957 and was made by Charles Katz to improve over FORTRAN, and it lead to the first English-language based compiler. Its name, as far as I know, is just a play on the word mathematics and the fact that it’s a machine (matic is short for automatic). So it's a math machine. -
Lisp
First appeared in 1958, it was developed by Steve Russell, Timothy P. Hart, and Mike Levin. Originally Lisp was used for mathematical notation, but now it can be used for many things, including Artificial Intelligence! The name Lisp comes from List Processor. -
COBOL
First appeared in 1959, and was developed by Howard Bromberg, Howard Discount, Vernon Reeves, Jean E. Sammet, William Selden, and Gertrude Tierney. The language was designed towards business and finance use to keep records of money and account balances. Its name stands for Common Business Oriented Language. -
RPG
First appeared in 1959 and was developed by the company IBM (mentioned in the FORTRAN section). It is mainly used for business applications that require a program to apply changes to many different records quickly. Its name stands for Report Program Generator. -
BASIC
First appeared in 1964, and was developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. The purpose of the language was to be easy and simple, so that pretty much anyone could use it. It stands for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, but I think they just really wanted it to spell basic. -
Logo
First appeared in 1967, and was developed by Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert. It is a graphic and logic based language unlike most of the other ones that were all number’s based. It was used mainly for young students because it was really simple and pretty-looking. The name Logo comes from the Greek word Logos, which means “word” or “plan”. -
B
First appeared in 1969, and was developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie. It was built to be used for “recursive, non-numeric, machine independent applications, such as system and language software.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_(programming_language)
No one knew what the name meant except for Ken Thompson. There are speculations that it might be contrived for a different language, BCPL, or from another language, Bon. -
Pascal
First appeared in 1970 and was made by Niklaus Wirth. It was a great programming language at teaching good programming practices to younger students. It was a basic structure and was a really good teaching tool. Pascal is named after Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher. -
C
First appeared in 1972, and was developed by Dennis Ritchie. Its main purpose was to be as flexible as possible. It would run on anything from a super computer to an embedded machine. I believe it is called C because Ritchie also helped design B, and C comes after B in the alphabet. -
ML
First appeared in 1973 and was made by Robin Milner and other people at the University of Edinburgh. It was made to be good at language design and compiling. It also wasn’t too bad at financial accounts. Its name stands for metalanguage. -
SQL
First appeared in 1974 and was made by ISO/IEC. It is specified to be used to manipulate data in a database. It really can’t do much else besides that. Its name stands for Structured Query Language. -
ADA
It made its first appearance in 1980, and was developed by Jean Ichbiah and Tucker Taft. Its original use was for real-time, defensive use for militaries, but it worked so well people went ahead and made it an all-purpose language. Its name is not an acronym; it’s actually named after the first programmer, Ada Lovelace. -
C++
First appeared in 1983, and was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup. It was made to be a variant of the C language that was fast and flexible AND provided high-level features. Its name obviously came from the programming language C, but instead of C+, it’s C++ because in the programming language C, when you want to add something you say ++ instead of +. -
Visual Basic
First appeared in 1991 and was made by Microsoft. It is an easy to use language designed to help users develop their own programs. It uses GUI meaning there are a lot of pretty pictures and buttons and it is easy to use. I do not know how it got its name however. -
Python
First appeared in 1991 and was made by Guido van Rossum. It was made to be the easiest to read and write and functional language, and it did a pretty good job at that. It’s an all-purpose language so you can do a lot of things with it too. Its name is based off of the movie character Monty Python. -
Delphi
First appeared in 1995, and was developed by the company Borland. Its main purpose is leaned towards development of websites and mobile applications. It was named after the Oracle of Delphi in early stages of development, and the name sort of stuck. -
Java
First appeared in 1995, and was developed by Oracle Corporation. It was meant to be able to run on any system that supported Java. They wanted anything and everything to be able to use Java. I don’t think anyone really knows why it’s called Java either. -
Javascript
First appeared in 1995, and was developed by Netscape Communications Corporation, Mozilla Foundation, and Ecma International. It’s mostly used in websites, but it could definitely be used in other things. And as far as its name goes I don’t think it actually has any affiliation with Java. -
PHP
First appeared in 1995 and was made by Rasmus Lerdorf. It was designed for web development, but it could do a lot of things. This made it an all-purpose language. Its name meant Personal Home Page. -
Citations
All information printed in this timeline is from
https://www.wikipedia.org/