Programming Languages Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    Konrad Zuse, for engineering, first language designed for a computer, Plan Calculus named for
  • MATH-MATIC

    for the Univac I and II, Remington Rand, early language
  • Lisp

    John McCarthey, long history, weird notation, younger than Fortran by a year
  • RPG

    by IBM, for business applications, Report Program Generator
  • BASIC

    John Kemeny, Thomas Kurtz, designed for ease-of-use, released at Dartmouth, Beginners' All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
  • LOGO

    educational language, Cynthia Soloman, derives from the Greek Logos, word or thought
  • B

    Ken Thompson, for mini-computers, the name derived from BCPL
  • PASCAL

    Niklaus Wirth, programming and data structuring, named for Blaise Pascal, supports good programming practices
  • ADA

    Jean Ichbiah, S. Tucker Taft, object-oriented, high-level, named after Ada Lovelace
  • SQL

    Structured Query Language, ISO, domain-specific language.
  • Python

    Guido Van Rossum, for code-readability, general purpose
  • Visual Basic

    Microsoft, ease-of-use intended for creation, hence name Visual Basic
  • PHP

    Rasmus Lerdorf, originally for web development, general purpose
  • Javascript

    first in 1995, Brendan Eich, high-level, multi-paradigm
  • ML

    Meta-Language, has roots in Lisp, Robin Milner, general purpose
  • Delphi

    Anders Hejlsberg, event-driven programming language based on object pascal
  • COBOL

    used for business, finance, and administrative systems, English-like programming system, Common Business Oriented Language
  • C++

    C++17 in 2017, Bjarne Stroustrup, general purpose programming language
  • C

    C18 released in 2018, Dennis Ritchie, Bell Labs, supports structured programming
  • Fortran

    Fortran 2018, John Backus, IBM, numerical computation and scientific programming, general-purpose
  • Java

    java 12 in 2019, James Gosling, general-purpose programming language, class based, object-oriented