Programming Languages

By Todeskuss

  • Plankalkül

    Plankalkül was designed by Konrad Zuse between 1943 and 1945. It was designed for engineering purposes and appeared in 1948.
    Plankalkül stands for Plan Calculus, but means "formal system for planning" in German.

  • Fortran

    FORTRAN was developed by IBM in the 1950s and first appeared in 1957. FORTRAN was originally created for scientific and engineering applications.
    The name "Fortran" is derived from "FORmula TRANslating System."

  • MATH-MATIC

    MATH-MATIC was created by a group led by Charles Katz, intended as an improvement over FORTRAN in 1957.

  • Lisp

    Lisp was developed by Steve Russell, Timothy P. Hart, and Mike Levin in 1958 for practical mathematical notation.
    The name "Lisp" is derived from "LISt Processor."

  • RPG

    RPG was developed by IBM in 1959. It is for business applications.
    The name "RPG" is an acronym standing for "Report Program Generator."

  • COBOL

    COBOL first appeared in 1959 developed by CODASYL. It was designed for business use.
    "COBOL" stands for "COmmon Business-Oriented Language"

  • BASIC

    The first BASIC language appeared in 1964, designed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz. It was created for enabling people other than scientists and mathematicians to use computers by ease of use.
    "BASIC" stands for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code."

  • Logo

    Logo first appeared in 1967 to teach programming concepts related to Lisp and reasons behind a graphical turtle's movement. It was designed and developed by Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert.
    Its name, Logo, is not an acronym like other languages. It is derived from the Greek word "logos," meaning "word" or "thought."

  • B

    B was designed and developed by Ken Thompson in 1969. It was designed for machine independent applications.
    It is derived from BCPL so the name "B" may be a contraction.

  • Pascal

    Pascal was designed by Niklaus Wirth in 1968-69 and published in 1970. Its purpose was to encourage programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.
    Pascal is named after a French mathematician named Blaise Pascal.

  • C

    C first appeared in 1972. It was designed/developed by Dennis Ritchie to put the Unix operating system back into use.
    The name of C was chosen just to follow the alphabetical order after the programming language B.

  • ML

    ML was designed and developed by Robin Milner in 1973. It is a functional language formed to develop proof tactics.
    ML stands for MetaLanguage.

  • SQL

    In 1974, SQL was developed by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce. It is designed for managing data in a database.
    SQL stands for Structured Query Language.

  • Ada

    ADA first appeared in 1980, designed by Jean Ichbiah. It was designed to be used by the US Department of Defense.
    It is named after Ada Lovelace, who is often called the first programmer.

  • C++

    Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1983, C++ was created mainly for system programming, but also proves to be useful in common desktop applications.
    The name C++ is a joke of C's increment operator, ++, indicating being an improvement upon C.

  • Python

    Python was designed by Guido van Rossum in 1991. Python's design focuses on readability and its syntax allows code to be compressed more than other languages.
    Python is named after the comedy group Monty Python.

  • Visual Basic

    Visual Basic was developed by Microsoft in 1991 intended to be relatively easy to learn and use.
    The "Visual" is describing the user interface developed by Alan Cooper, and "Basic" comes from the Embedded BASIC engine.

  • Delphi

    Delphi was created as a rapid application development tool by Borland Software Corporation in 1995.
    Delphi is named in reference to the Oracle at Delphi.

  • Java

    Java was developed by James Gosling in 1995. It was designed to be able to "write once, run everywhere."
    Java is named after Java coffee.

  • PHP

    PHP was first developed by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, and first appeared in 1995. It was designed for web development, but is also used with general purpose programming.
    PHP is a recursive backronym "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor."

  • JavaScript

    JavaScript first appeared in 1995 developed by Brendan Eich. It aimed at appealing to non-professional programmers as a lightweight interpreted language.
    Its name choice is considered a marketing ploy, as a spinoff of the Java programming language.