Programming Languages Timeline

By myronQ

  • Plankalkul

    Made by Konrad Zuse. It is for engineering purposes and is the first real computer programming language. Plankalkul means "Plan Calculus."

  • Fortran

    Made by John Backus for IBM in 1954, but was released commercially in 1957. It was originally a digital code interpreter, but is used today for programming scientific and mathematical applications. Fortran stands for "Formula Translation."

  • MATH-MATIC

    Made by Grace Hopper. It was a commercial compiler for the UNIVAC I computer and is for math. It is called MATH-MATIC because it solves math.

  • Lisp

    Made by John McCarthy when he was at MIT. It is mainly used for Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and other forms of advanced programming that require recursive logic. It is called Lisp because every expression is a list.

  • COBOL

    Made by the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL). It is used for business and administrative purposes. COBOL stands for "Common Business Oriented Language."

  • RPG

    Made by IBM. It was an alternative for the punch card processing system on the IBM 1401 and now serves as a wide array of business applications and uses. RPG stands for "Report Program Generator."

  • BASIC

    Made by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The purpose was to make a way for students to write simple computer programs. BASIC stands for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code."

  • LOGO

    Made by Seymour Papert, with a team from Bolt, Beranek and Newman, led by Wallace Feurzeig. It is an educational programming language, known for letting users draw shapes using a robotic or graphical turtle. It is called LOGO because of the greek logos, which means word or thought.

  • B

    Developed by D. M. Ritchie and K. L. Thompson. Is used mainly for non-numeric applications, like system programming. B was derived from the programming language BCPL.

  • PASCAL

    Made by Niklaus Wirth of Switzerland. It is used to teach structured programming and was also used for production software. It is named after Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century French mathematician.

  • SQL

    Made by IBM researchers Raymond Boyce and Donald Chamberlin. It is used to communicate with and manipulate databases. SQL stands for "Structured Query Language."

  • ML

    Made by Robin Milner and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh. It is for meta-programming, which is for writing programs that manipulate other programs. ML stands for “meta-language.”

  • C

    Made by Dennis M. Ritchie. It was made to write an operating system called UNIX and was initially used for system development work. The reason it was named C is because it came after the B programming language.

  • C++

    Made by Bjarne Stroustrup. It is a high-level object-oriented programming language and helps write fast, portable programs. It is called C++ because it was made from C.

  • ADA

    Made by a group led by Dr. Jean Ichbiah at CII-Honeywell-Bull in France. It is a general-purpose programming language used for many things. ADA honors Augusta Ada Lovelace, who is sometimes known as the world's first programmer.

  • Python

    Made by Guido van Rossum and developed by Python Software Foundation. It is for emphasis on code readability and can show concepts with fewer lines of code. It is called Python because it was named after the television show, "Monty Python's Flying Circus."

  • Java

    Made by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems. It is supposed to be like C++, but is simpler and is for object-oriented programming. It is called Java because of Java coffee.

  • Visual Basic

    Made by Microsoft and Alan Cooper. It provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that lets programmers modify code by dragging dropping objects and defining their behavior and appearance. It's called Visual Basic because of the GUI.

  • PHP

    Made by Rasmus Lerdorf. It is a server side scripting language that's used to develop Static websites, Dynamic websites, or Web applications. The full name for PHP is PHP Hypertext Preprocessor, and the Preprocessor part is there because the PHP codes are processed before sending them to the browser.

  • Delphi

    Made by Anders Hejlsberg. It's a high-level, compiled, strongly typed language and supports structured and object-oriented design. It is based on Object Pascal.

  • Javascript

    Made by Brendan Eich, a Netscape Communications Corporation programmer. It is used for object-oriented programming and makes web development easier and look better. It was originally called "LiveScript," but was changed to Javascript to show Netscape’s support of Java within its browser.