Programming Languages Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    Plankalkul
    Plankalkul was developed by Konrad Zuse. It is a programming language designed for engineering purposes. Plankalkul is German and translates to "formal system for planning" in English.
  • Fortran

    Fortran
    Fortran was developed by John Backus and IBM. It was originally developed for scientific and engineering applications. Fortran is a shortened version of the original name of Formula Translation.
  • MATH-MATIC

    MATH-MATIC
    MATH-MATIC was developed by Grace Hopper and Charles Katz under the business Remmington Rand. It was used as an early programming language for the UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II, to make fast and simplified programming of mathematical problems. MATH-MATIC is the marketing name for the AT-3 (Algebraic Translator 3) compiler to make it sound better.
  • Lisp

    Lisp
    Lisp was invented by John McCarthy while he was at MIT. Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs. The name LISP derives from "LISt Processor".
  • COBOL

    COBOL
    COBOL was designed by Howard Bromberg, Howard Discount, Vernon Reeves, Jean E. Sammet, William Selden, and Gertrude Tierney. It was designed for business use. COBOL is an acronym for Common Business Oriented Language.
  • RPG

    RPG
    RPG was developed by IBM. RPG was originally created for punched card machines, but he language has been updated over time. RPG is used in the generation of reports from data files, including matching record and sub-total reports. RPG stands for Report Program Generator.
  • BASIC

    BASIC
    BASIC was designed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz. They created it because they wanted to enable students outside of the science and math fields to use computers, since at the time nearly all computers required writing software. BASIC is an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
  • LOGO

    LOGO
    LOGO was developed by Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert. It is an educational programming language, known for its use of turtle graphics. They use commands for movement and drawing produced line graphics either on screen or with a small robot called a turtle. LOGO was derived from the Greek logos meaning word or "thought".
  • B

    B
    B was developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. B was designed for recursive, non-numeric, machine independent applications. Since B is derived from BCPL, its name is speculated to be a contraction of BCPL.
  • PASCAL

    PASCAL
    PASCAL was developed by Niklaus Wirth. The language was developed to be used as a small, efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring. PASCAL was named after the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal.
  • C

    C
    C was developed by Dennis Ritchie. C provides constructs that map efficiently to typical machine instructions. The name C was chosen simply because it came after the letter B.
  • ML

    ML
    ML was developed by Robin Milner. ML is a general-purpose functional programming language, used to develop proof tactics in the LCF theorem prover. ML stands for MetaLanguage.
  • SQL

    SQL
    SQL was designed by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce. SQL is used as a special-purpose domain-specific language for programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system. SQL is an acronym for Structured Query Language.
  • ADA

    ADA
    ADA was developed by Jean Ichbiah for the Department of Defense, in order to replace all the other programming languages they were using at that time. ADA was named after Ada Lovelace, who is credited with being the first computer programmer.
  • C++

    C++
    C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup, a danish computer scientist. Stroustrup developed this to enhance the C language by putting Simula-like features into it. It was named C++ because "++" was the increment operator in C.
  • Python

    Python
    Python was created by Guido van Rossum. Python is mainly used for general-purpose programming and also emphasizes code readability. Rossum said he chose Python as the name because "being in a slightly irreverent mood (and a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus)."
  • Delphi

    Delphi
    Delphi was originally developed by Borland. It was designed to be a rapid application development tool for Windows to replace Turbo Pascal. Borland developer Danny Thorpe suggested the Delphi code name in reference to the Oracle at Delphi.
  • Java

    Java
    Java was originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems. Java was specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is intended to let application developers "write once, run anywhere". It was named Java after Java coffee.
  • JavaScript

    JavaScript
    JavaScript was developed by Brendan Eich from Netscape Communications. JavaScript was designed to be a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles. The name JavaScript is thought to be a marketing ploy by Netscape.
  • PHP

    PHP
    PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf. PHP is designed primarily for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but now has come to stand for Hypertext Preprocessor.
  • Visual Basic

    Visual Basic
    Visual Basic was developed by Microsoft with help from Alan Cooper. Microsoft intended Visual Basic to be relatively easy to learn and use. It is used so that you can create an application using the components provided by the Visual Basic. Since Visual Basic was based on BASIC it derived its name from BASIC as well, adding the "Visual" in front of the name.