Programming Language Timeline

By reillyswetnam1

  • Plankalkül Was Created

    Plankalkül is a programming language created by Konrad Zuse in 1946. It was designed for engineering purposes and was more comprehensively published in 1972, with its first compiler being released in 1998. Its name means Plan Calculus in german.

  • MATH-MATIC Was Created

    MATH-MATIC was a early programming language for UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II and was developed by Charles Katz. MATH-MATIC was intended as an improvement over FORTRAN. MATH-MATIC led to the development of the first English-language business data processing compiler, B-0 (FLOW-MATIC).

  • Fortran Was Created

    Fortran is an early general-purpose programming language designed in 1957 by John Backus and IBM. It was created for scientific computing and numeric computation. Its name is derived from Formula Translating System.

  • Lisp Was Created

    Lisp is a high level programming language developed in 1958 by Steve Russel, Timothy Hart, and Mike Levin. It was designed by John McCarthy. It was originally used as a practical mathematical notation, but began to be used in artificial intelligence research.

  • RPG Was Created

    RPG is a high-level programming language created by IBM. It was designed to create business applications. It is one of the few languages created for punch card machines that is still used today. RPG stands for Report Program Generator.

  • COBOL Was Created

    COBOL was created in 1959 by Grace Hopper. Its primary uses were in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. It is one of the oldest programming languages. The name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language.

  • BASIC Was Created

    BASIC was created in 1964 by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College. It is a programming language designed to be used for writing software in a wide variety of application domains. The name is an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

  • LOGO Was Created

    LOGO is an educational programming language designed in 1967 by Daniel Bobrow, Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon. It was mainly designed as a learning instrument, not a tool.

  • B Was Created

    B is a programming language that was created in 1969 by D.M. Ritchie and K.L. Thompson. Its primary purpose was to write non-numeric applications, such as system programming. It is named after the BCPL programming language.

  • Pascal Was Created

    Pascal was created in 1970 by Nicklaus Wirth. It was intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring. It is named after the french mathematician Blaise Pascal.

  • C Was Created

    C was invented in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Bell Labs. It is a language designed to create software. The name is meant to show that C is more advanced than the programming language B.

  • ML Was Created

    ML is a general purpose functional programming language created in 1973 by Robert Milner. It was designed to develop proof tactics in the LCF theorem prover. Its name stands for metalanguage.

  • SQL Was Created

    SQL is a special-purpose programming language designed by Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce. Its purpose was to manage data held in a relational database management system. It was originally supposed to be called SEQUEL, but was changed to SQL because SEQUEL was a trademark of the Hawker Siddley aircraft company.

  • C++ Was Created

    C++ was invented in 1983 by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs. It was created to be an enhanced version of the programming language C. It was named C++ as a pun involving the increment operator.

  • ADA Was Created

    The programming language ADA was created in 1983 by a team led by Jean Ichbiah of Honeywell Bull, a computer company, under contract for the department of defense. It was created to supersede the hundreds of languages that the Department of defense were using at the time. It is named after Ada Lovelace, who is credited with being the first programmer.

  • Python Was Created

    Python is a widely used general-purpose programming language designed by Guido van Rossum. It is often used as a scripting language and has gained popularity through its ability to allow users to express concepts in fewer lines of code. It is named after the snake species, Python.

  • Visual Basic Was Created

    Visual Basic is an object-oriented programming language created by Microsoft. It was designed to be an easy programming language for users to learn and use. It is a derivative from the programming language, BASIC.

  • Delphi was created

    Delphi was created by Borland to be a Rapid Application Development Tool. It was released in 1995. Its name was originally just a codename, but later became its real name.

  • PHP Was Created

    PHP is a server-side scripting language created by Rasmus Lerdorf. It was designed to create web applications and web development but can now be used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

  • Javascript Was Created

    Javascript is a dynamic computer programming language created by Brendan Eich and Netscape Communications. It is mostly used in web browsers. It is called Javascript because it was originally meant to complement Java by appealing to nonprofessional programmers.

  • Java Was Created

    Java was created in 1995 and released in 1996 by James Gosling and Sun Microsystems. It was designed to be a programming language with as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is named after the java coffee.