Programming Language Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    Developed by Konrad Zuse
    Designed for the German war effort
    Plankalkul is German for "Plan Calculus"
  • Fortran

    Developed by John Backus
    Designed for numerical and scientific calculations
    Fortran comes from FORmula TRANslating System
  • MATH-MATIC

    Developed by Chales Katz
    Designed to compete with Fortran
    MATH-MATIC does not stand for anything
  • Lisp

    Developed by John McCarthy
    Designed for artificial intelligence
    LISP comes from LISt Processing
  • COBOL

    Developed by Grace Hopper
    Designed for business, financial, and administrative systems
    COBOL is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language
  • RPG

    Developed by a team at IBM
    Designed for business mainframes
    RPG stands for Report Program Generator
  • BASIC

    Developed by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz
    Designed for ease of use and compatibility
    BASIC stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
  • LOGO

    Developed by Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert
    Designed for educational use and graphics
    LOGO does not stand for anything.
  • B

    Developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie
    Designed for use on mainframes
    The name "B" has no signifigant meaning
  • PASCAL

    Developed by Niklaus Wirth
    Designed to be small and efficient
    PASCAL does not stand for anything
  • C

    Developed by Dennis Ritchie
    Designed for applications and ease of use
    The letter C was chosen because it is one letter after B
  • ML

    Developed by Robin Milner
    Designed to prove mathematical theorems
    ML stands for Metalanguage
  • SQL

    Developed by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce
    Designed for database management
    SQL stands for Structured Query Language
  • ADA

    Developed by a team lead by Jean Ichbiah
    Designed for use by the Department of Defense
    Named after Ada Lovelace
  • C++

    Developed by Bjarne Stroustrup
    Designed to be C with classes and object oriented-programming
    C++ is an upgraded version of C
  • Delphi

    Developed by Niklaus Wirth and Anders Hejlsberg
    Designed to improve on the PASCAL language
    Delphi is a site of Greek ruins
  • Python

    Developed by Guido van Rossum
    Designed for ease of use and scripting
    Python was named after the comedy group Monty Python
  • Visual Basic

    Developed by a team from Microsoft
    Design for graphical interfaces
    Visual Basic is exactly what it sounds like, a visual verison of BASIC
  • Java

    Developed by James Gosling
    Designed to be compatible with any operating system
    Java has no signifigant meaning
  • Javascript

    Developed by Brendan Eich
    Designed for scripting
    The name Javascript has no signifigant meaning
  • PHP

    Developed by Rasmus Lerdorf
    Designed for web development
    PHP stands for Personal Home Page