Programming Language Timeline

By Tbouman
  • Plankalkul

    Created by Konrad Zuse - Used for engineering purposes - Stood for Plan Calculus
  • MATH-MATIC

    Created by Charles Katz - Used for functions and expressions - No acronym
  • Fortran

    Created by John Backus - Used for designing bridges and automation controls - Stood for Formula Translator
  • RPG

    Created by IBM - Used for report-building - Stood for Report Program Generator
  • COBOL

    Created by Grace Hopper - Used for business and administrative purposes - Stood for Common Business Oriented Languages
  • BASIC

    Created by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz - Used for interactive mainframe time sharing - Stood for Beginners All Purpose Instruction Code
  • LOGO

    Created by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon - Used for creating basic shapes with a turtle cursor - Derived from Greek word ,logos, meaning “thought”
  • B

    Created by Ken Thompson - Used for machine-independent applications - Name based on Bon
  • PASCAL

    Late 1960’s - Created by Niklaus Wirth - Used to teach programming - Named based on Blaise Pascal
  • SQL

    Early 1970’s - Created by Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce - Used for communicating with databases - Stood for Structured Query Language
  • ML

    Early 1970’s - Created by Robin Milner - Used for theorem-proving projects - Stood for Meta Language
  • C

    Created by Dennis Ritchie - Used for implementing operating systems and embedded system applications - Stood for Basic
  • LISP

    1970s - Created by John McCarthy - Used for manipulation of data strings - Stood for Lisp Processing
  • ADA

    Early 1980’s - Created by Jean Ichbiah and S. Tucker Taft - Used by the Department of Defense - Name based on Augusta Ada King
  • Python

    Created by Guido van Rossum - Used for websites, web applications, and functionality of an application - No acronym
  • Visual Basic

    Created by Alan Cooper - Used to choose and modify sections of code - No Acronym
  • PHP

    Created by Rasmus Lerdorf - Used for server-side web development - Stood for Personal Home Page
  • Java

    Created by James Gosling - Used for creating applications - No acronym
  • Javascript

    Created by Brendan Eich - Used as a scripting language for HTML pages - Based on Java
  • Delphi

    Created by Anders Hejlsberg - Used for object-oriented design - Based on the Pascal Language
  • C++

    Created by Bjarne Stroustrup - Used for general-purpose programming - Based on the C Language