-
Period: to
Programming Languages
-
Plankalkul
Konrad Zuse developed the "first high level non-Von Neumann programming language for computers", though it didn't see much use until far after its development. The name means Plan Calculus in German. -
Fortran
FORmula TRANslating System - Created by John Backus and IBM, the language excels in numerical and scientific uses, such as weather prediction programs. -
MATH-MATIC
Charles Katz and his team created this language for the UNIVAC. -
Lisp
LISt Processing - Designed by John McCarthy, Lisp was among the earlier languages that pioneered ideas that would be used in future ones. -
COBOL
COmmon Business-Oriented Language - Howard Bromberg, Howard Discount, Vernon Reeves, Jean E. Sammet, William Selden, and Gertrude Tierney created COBOL as a highly readable programming language for businesses to use. -
RPG
Report Program Generator - IBM developed RPG originally to replicate punched-card processing, though it has since been updated many times, with RPG IV being the most modern instance. -
BASIC
Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code - John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed BASIC to help more students of Dartmouth College to use computers. -
LOGO
Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert originally designed LOGO to teach concepts of programming in Lisp. The name, Logo, comes from the greek word 'logos', meaning 'thought'. -
B
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie developed B for primarily non-numeric applications such as system programming. B may be named as a contraction of BCPL, from which it is derived. -
PASCAL
Niklaus Wirth designed Pascal to be an efficient language that encouraged better programming practices. It was named for Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher. -
C
Dennis Ritchie developed C as a general-purpose program, presumably called C because of Ritchie's previous work on B. Many later languages have derived from C. -
ML
Meta Language - Robin Milner and others at the University of Edinburgh created ML to assist LCF (Logic for Computable Functions, also developed by Milner at the University of Edinburgh) in proving theorems. -
ADA
Jean Ichbiah and his team created Ada for the US Department of Defense to replace the many other languages they were using. It was named for Ada Lovelace, the first programmer. -
C++
Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++ for system programming, with design highlights such as efficiency and flexibility of use that help in resource-constrained systems. C++ derives from C. -
SQL
Structured Query Language - Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce designed SQL specifically to manage data held in a relational database management system. -
Python
Guido van Rossum developed Python to be a highly readable language that used less lines than other languages could. -
Visual Basic
Microsoft originally developed Visual Basic, derived from BASIC, for Microsoft's COM, which allows various object-oriented programming languages to collaborate. It's intended to be easy to learn. -
PHP
Personal Home Page or PHP: Hypertext Processor - Rasmus Lerdorf designed PHP for web development, though it is capable of general-purpose programming. -
Delphi
Delphi was created by Borland Software Corporation as an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for various applications. Its name is a reference to the Oracle database and their combined relation to the mythological 'Oracle at Delphi'. -
Java
Designed by James Gosling, Java was intended to be capable of running on most applications, with few limitations. -
Javascript
Designed by Brendan Eich, Javascript has nothing to do with Java, and is instead an essential programming language used in the majority of sites on the internet.