Programming Languages Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    by Konrad Zuse. It was designed for engineering purposes.
  • Fortran

    by John Backus. It was created for scientific and engineering applications.
  • MATH-MATIC

    by group led by Charles Katz. It allowed programmers and non-progammers alike to use mathematical computer applications.
  • Lisp

    by John McCarthy. It was created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs.
  • COBOL

    by the Conference on Data Systems Languages. The name is an acronyme for Common business-oriented language. Purpose of COBOL was to help the Department of Defense create a portable programming language for data processing.
  • RPG

    by IBM. Standing for report program generator, it is used in DEC and IBM minicomputer operating systems.
  • • BASIC

    by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College. Acronym stands for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. The purpose was to allow students in fields other than science and math to use computers.
  • LOGO

    by Daniel G. Bobrow, Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon. It was created for educational purposes where kids could play with words and sentences.
  • B

    by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. Its name was possibly derived from Bon, an earlier program designed by Thompson (Bon was named after Bonnie, Thompson’s wife). B was designed for non-numeric machine independent applications such as system and language software.
  • PASCAL

    by Niklaus Wirth. It was created to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data.
  • C

    by Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Bell Labs. Its initial purpose was to reimplement the current Unix system. It is now used as machine instructions and in applications in place of assembly language.
  • ML

    by Robin Milner. It stands for metalanguage and created to develop proof tactics in math.
  • SQL

    by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce. It stands for Structured Query Language and is designed to manage data.
  • C++

    by Bjarne Stroustrup. Purpose was to enchance C language. Stroustrup wanted to create a language that was helpful for large softwares and also fast.
  • ADA

    By a team led by Jean Ichbiah of CII Honeywell Bull. It was named after Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. Ada was designed for large software systems, with packages that could be compiled separately. The features allowed for detection of problems early on in the design phase.
  • Python

    by Guido van Rossum. It is a general-purpose, high-level programming language that allowed programmers to use fewer coding lines.
  • Visual Basic

    by Microsoft. It was designed to be easy to learn and use so that those new to programming such as students could program.
  • Delphi

    by Borland. It uses the language Pascal and is a third generation structured language. The purpose was to create a clean and consistent program that could result in reliable applications.
  • Java

    by James Gosling and Sun Microsystems. The system was specifically designed to have few implementation dependencies so that the application developers could write once and run the product anywhere.
  • Javascript

    by Brendan Eich. The program is used in web browsers and server-side network programming.
  • PHP

    by Rasmus Lerdorf. It stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and is used as an open source general-purpose scripting language. PHP is especially suited for web development.