History of Programming Languages

By nolan_nixon
  • FORTRAN

    FORTRAN

    One of the earliest programming languages ever.
  • ALGOL

    ALGOL

    Great inspiration for many future languages.
  • COBOL

    COBOL

    Another early language that was inspiring, many older systems today are based on COBOL still.
  • BASIC

    BASIC

    Short for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code", it was a major consumer language from the 80s that revolutionized the computer market and introduced programming to many people during its era.

  • BCPL

    Precursor to C.

  • B

    Crucial precursor to C based on BCPL.

  • Pascal

    Influenced by ALGOL. Created to encourage good programming habits.
  • C

    C

    Very important language, even today. Foundation for many other languages and is still in use today.

  • Modula

    Modular programming language.
  • Delphi

    Delphi

    Object-oriented version of Pascal.
  • C++

    C++

    Object-oriented C with many new major features. Still used to this day.
  • Python

    Python

    Scripting language that encourages code readability.

  • HTML

    Created as part of the World-Wide-Web by Tim Berner's Lee.
  • Java

    Java

    Multi-platform object oriented language created by Sun Microsystems.
  • JavaScript

    JavaScript

    Not to be confused with Java. Created for Web browsers for dynamic content.
  • CSS

    CSS

    Created to stylize Web pages.
  • C#

    C#

    Similar to Java in many ways. Very easy language to pick up.
  • D

    D

    Language with major influences with C++, while focusing on performance.