Computer Programming Timeline

  • Fortran

    Created by IBM for scientific and engineering purposes, its name means Formula Translating System.
  • MATH-MATIC

    Created by Charles Katz and his team, it was originally intended to be used to be an improvement over Fortran. It is the marketing name for the AT-3 Compiler.
  • Lisp

    Created by Steve Russell, Timothy P. Hart, and Mike Levin it was originally intended for mathematical notation but is most commonly used for programming A.I or Artificial Intellegence. Its name comes from LISt Processing.
  • COBOL

    The Conference on Data Systems Languages created this language for the DOD to be a portable programming language for data processing, it stands for Common Business Oriented Language.
  • RPG

    Created by IBM to replicate punched card processing. RPG means Report Program Generator.
  • LOGO

    Created by Daniel G. Bobrow, Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon and was designed to teach the concepts of LISP. Its name comes from the greek word Logos meaning "word" or "thought".
  • B

    Created by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, many believe to be an "early version" of C and its name is a shorthand of BCPL.
  • BASIC

    Created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, this language was designed to be simple so students who were interested in computers could use them.(Most computers in this time required knowledge of code to be used.) BASIC stands for (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)
  • PASCAL

    Created by Niklaus Wirth it was designed to encourage good programming practices and is very influential. PASCAL was named in honor of the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal.
  • C

    Created by Dennis Ritchie, C was used to make the Unix operating system useable again. This is one of the most widely used programming language in the world.
  • ML

    Created by Robin Milner & others at the University of Edinburgh and was designed to develop proof tactics in the LCF theorem prover. Its name stands for metalanguage.
  • SQL

    Created by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce for for managing data held in a relational database management system. SQL means Structured Query Language.
  • ADA

    Designed by Jean Ichbiah and his team for the DOD to be better than the other hundreds of languages. It was named after the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace.
  • C++

    Bjarne Stroustrup created this language to be used for system programming and is a very quick language. It is used for things such as space probes and games programming.
  • Python

    Created by Guido van Rossum and was designed to emphasize readability and express concepts in fewer lines of code compared to JAVA or C++. Its was named Python because Guido is a big fan of Monty Pythons's Flying Circus.
  • Visual Basic

    Created by Microsoft to be easy to learn and use and is enables the use of rapid application development and graphical user interface. Its called Visual Basic because its an updated form of BASIC and the visual part comes from the ability to drag and drop parts onto a form.
  • Delphi

    Created by Borland it was made to be a rapid application development tool for windows. Allthough it was intended to be called Borland AppBuilder another company created an AppBuilder and Borland needed a new name so they went with the development codename "Delphi".
  • Java

    Created by James Gosling its was designed to be able to run on any platform. Its saying is "Write once, run anywhere." Its was named Java because the developers drank alot of java coffee, and was originally called oak.
  • Javascript

    Created by Brendan Eich it is commonly used in web browsers, and was named Javascript because it can run on many browsers like Java can run on many platforms and it handles scripts.
  • PHP

    Created by Rasmus Lerdorf to be a server side scripting language for web development. PHP means Personal Home Page.
  • Plankalkul

    Created by Konrad Zuse, it was first thought of in 1941 but due to war time conditions didnt get much attention but Zuse made books about it and in 1998 the first compiler was released. Plankalkul means "Plan Calculus".
  • Citation

    All of this information came from Wikipedia.