History of Programming Languages

By AliciaLord

  • Plankalkul

    Creator: Konrad Zuse
    Purpose: Plankalkul is a programming language designed for engineering purposes.
    Name Origin: Plan Calculus

  • MATH-MATIC

    Creator: Charles Katz
    Purpose: Writen as an early programming language for the UNIVAC 1 and 2
    Name Origin:

  • FORTRAN

    Creator: John Backus
    Purpose: Suited to numeric computation and scientific computing
    Name Origin: FORmula TRANslation

  • LISP

    Creator: John McCarthy
    Purpose: Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs
    Name Origin: LISt Processing

  • COBOL

    Creator: CODASYL
    Purpose: It was created as part of a US Department of Defense effort to create a portable programming language for data processing.
    Name Origin: COmmon Business Oriented Language

  • B

    Creator: Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie
    Purpose: B was designed for recursive, non-numeric, machine-independent applications, such as system and language software
    Name Origin: Contraction of BCPL

  • RPG

    Creator: IBM
    Purpose: Originally created with punch cards in mind it original purpose was for the creation of reports from data
    Name Origin: Report Program Generator

  • BASIC

    Creator: John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz
    Purpose: To enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers.
    Name Origin: Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

  • LOGO

    Creator: Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon
    Purpose: A general-purpose language, Logo is widely known for its use of turtle graphics, in which commands for movement and drawing produced line graphics either on screen or with a small robot called a turtle.
    Name Origin: Derives from the Greek word Logos

  • PASCAL

    Creator: Niklaus Wirth
    Purpose: PASCAL was designed as a small, efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.
    Name Origin: Named after Blaise Pascal

  • C

    Creator: Dennis Richie
    Purpose: Originally written to re-implement the Unix operating system but has since become on of the most widely used programming languages of all time.
    Name Origin: C - because Dennis Richie didn't like typing long words

  • ML

    Creator: Robin Milner
    Purpose: ML (Meta Language) is a general-purpose functional programming language. It has roots in Lisp, and has been characterized as "Lisp with types".
    Name Origin: Meta Language

  • SQL

    Creator: Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce
    Purpose: designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS)
    Name Origin: Structured Query Language

  • ADA

    Creator: Jean Ichbiah
    Purpose: Ada was created to supercede 450 programming languages used by the Department of Defense.
    Name Origin: Named after Ada Lovelace

  • C++

    Creator: Bjarne Stroustrup
    Purpose: C++ was developedas an efficient and flexible language similar to C, which also provided high-level features for program organization.
    Name Origin:

  • Java

    Creator: James Gosling
    Purpose: Java was specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It was intended to let application developers "Write Once, Run Anywhere" which means programs can be run on any system that has a Java Virtual Machine runtime Jokingly referred to as "Write Once, Test Everywhere.".
    Name Origin: Originaly called Oak for the tree that stood outside Goslings window and later renamed Java from Java Coffee

  • Python

    Creator: Guido van Rossum
    Purpose: Python was designed for code readability providing constructs that enable clear programming on both small and large scales
    Name Origin: Name came from Monty Python's Flying Circus

  • Visual Basic

    Creator: Microsoft
    Purpose: Visual Basic was derived from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications
    Name Origin: Derived from BASIC

  • PHP

    Creator: Rasmus Lerdorf
    Purpose: PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for Web development
    Name Origin: PHP: Hypertext Processor, because the recursive genius of GNU wasn't cleaver enough. (GNU Not Unix)

  • Delphi

    Creator: Borland
    Purpose: Delphi was originally developed by Borland as a rapid application development tool for Windows as the successor of Turbo Pascal.
    Name Origin: Came from the Oracle of Delphi

  • JavaScript

    Creator: Netscape
    Purpose: JavaScript enables interactive web pages and thus is an essential part of web applications.
    Name Origin: Officially called LiveScript when it first came out but quickly renamed to JavaScript