Programming Language Timeline

By BrayanEM

  • Plankalkul

    Plankalkul – Developed: 1948. Developers: Konrad Zuse. Purpose: Was designed for engineering purposes. Acronym: Doesn’t have an acronym, but it is also known as Plan Calculus when translated from German.

  • Fortran

    Fortran – Developed: 1957. Developers: John Backus, IBM. Purpose: Was created for scientists and engineers. Use to create designs of bridges and structures. Acronym: Fortran stands for formula translator.

  • MATH-MATIC

    MATH-MATIC – Developed: 1957. Developers: Charles Katz, Grace Hopper. Purpose: Being able to use numeric exponents, decimals, and fractions in code. Acronym: MATH-MATIC doesn’t have an acronym, but it is known as AT-3, which is algebraic translator 3.

  • Lisp

    Lisp – Developed: 1958. Developers: Steve Russell, Timothy P. Hart, and Mike Levin. Purpose: Designed for easy manipulation of data strings. Acronym: LISP stands for list processing.

  • RPG

    RPG – Developed: 1959. Developers: IBM. Purpose: Report writing tool for card-input IBM mainframes. Acronym: RPG stands for Report Program Generator.

  • COBOL

    COBOL – Developed: 1959. Developers: CODASYL, Grace Hopper. Purpose: At the time, for the US Department of Defense for a portable programming language for data processing. Acronym: COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language.

  • BASIC

    BASIC – Developed: 1964. Developers: John G. Kemeny, Thomas E. Kurtz. Purpose: For students to be able to write simple computer programs. Acronym: BASIC stands for Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

  • LOGO

    LOGO – Developed: 1967. Developers: BBN Technologies. Purpose: Generating basic shapes using a turtle cursor. Acronym: LOGO stands for Logic Oriented Graphic Oriented.

  • B

    B – Developed: 1969. Developers: Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie. Purpose: Run non-numeric applications such as system programming. Acronym: B technically doesn’t have an acronym, but it is said that its name is derived from BCPL, and the B in BCPL stands for Basic.

  • PASCAL

    PASCAL – Developed: 1970. Developers: Niklaus Wirth. Purpose: Encourage good programming practices using data structuring and structured programming. Acronym: Doesn’t have an acronym, but it is also known as Assistance Program for Science and Languages, translated from French.

  • C

    C – Developed: 1972. Developers: Dennis Ritchie, Bell Labs. Purpose: Use to support scripting system applications like Windows, UNICX, and Linux operating system. Acronym: It doesn’t have an acronym.

  • ML

    ML – Developed: 1973. Developers: Robin Milner. Purpose: Pattern matching for function arguments. Used heavily in programming language research. Acronym: ML stands for meta-language.

  • SQL

    SQL – Developed: 1974. Developers: Donald D. Chamberlin, Raymond F. Boyce. Purpose: Managing data in a relational database management system. Acronym: SQL stands for Structured Query Language.

  • ADA

    ADA - Developed: 1980. Developers: Jean Ichbiah, S. Tucker Taft. Purpose: Provide additional support to modern programming practices. Acronym: ADA is not an acronym, but was named in honor of Augusta Ada Lovelace, who is sometimes considered as the first ever computer programmer.

  • C++

    C++ - Developed: 1985. Developers: Bjarne Stroustrup. Purpose: Use to develop games and gaming engines. Acronym: C++ stands for C Object-Oriented.

  • Python

    Python – Developed: 1990. Developers: Guido Van Rossum, Python Software Foundation. Purpose: Use to develop complex scientific and numeric applications. Acronym: Python doesn’t have an acronym.

  • PHP

    PHP – Developed: 1995. Developers: Rasmus Lerdorf, The PHP Development Team. Purpose: Developing dynamic web pages. Acronym: PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor.

  • Delphi

    Delphi – Developed: 1995. Developers: Borland Software Corporation. Purpose: Rapid application development tool for Windows. Acronym: Delphi doesn’t have an acronym, but it is known as an object-oriented programming language (OOP) and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

  • Java

    Java – Developed: 1995. Developers: Sun Microsystems, James Gosling. Purpose: Was created to run all platforms that uses Java without the need of recompilation. Acronym: Doesn’t have an acronym, it’s only a cross-platform programming language.

  • JavaScript

    JavaScript – Developed: 1995. Developers: Netscape Communications Corporation, Mozilla Foundation, Ecma International. Purpose: Make web development easier and much more attractive. Acronym: JavaScript has no acronym, it’s only a high-level interpreted scripting.