Programming Languages

By Lauren Boyd

  • Plankalkul

    Plankalkul was created by Konrad Zue. It was the first high-level, non-von Neuman programming language designed with the intent of using it for computers.

  • Fortran

    Fortran was orginally developed by IBM's John Backus for engineering and scientific purposes. Fortran is derived from FORTRAN which is derived from Formula Translating System. Fortran is a general purpose language that helps with numeric and scientific computations. It has been helpful in "numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, computational physics and computational chemistry."

  • Math-Matic

    Math-Matic was created by Charles Katz. It was originally created to be an improvement over Fortran. Math-Matic was the early programming language for both UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II.

  • Lisp

    Invented by John McCarthy to be used for computers as practical mathematical notation. Lisp is a multipadigram. It quickly became the perfered language for artificial intelligence. Lisp is derived from List Processing.

  • COBOL

    COBOL, or COmmon Business-Oriented Learning, was designed by Howard Bromberg, Howard Discount, Vernon Reeves, Jean Sammet, William Seldent, and Gertrude Tierney. It is used by companies and governments for administrative systems, business, and finance.

  • RPG

    Created by IBM, RPG, or Report Program Generator, is a high level programming language that was designed for business applications.

  • Basic

    In 1964 ohn G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz originally designed Basic, which is derived from Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. They wanted enable students in fiels other than science and math to use computers. Back then, computers required custom software that generally only people in the fields of math and science used so Basic opened up the use of computers to the general public.

  • LOGO

    Logo was created by Daniel Bobrow, Wally Feurzeig, Symour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon. Ghost, the first implemention of Logo, was used to create a 'math world' for kids. Logo uses turtle graphics for its educationcal programming, which is its main priority.

  • B

    Developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. It was designed for system and language softwares. The B is dervied from BCPL which is another programming language Thompson designed earlier.

  • Pascal

    Pascal was designed by Niklaus Wirth with the intention of encouraging good computer programming practices through structured programming and data.

  • SQL

    SQL, or Structured Query Language, was developed in IBM by Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce. It was intended to manipulate and retrieve date that was stored in IBM's quasi-relational database management system.

  • C

    C was designed by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973. C was designed to re-implement the operating system Unix and has now become a popular, imperative computer programming language. It also supports structured programming.

  • ML

    ML, or Markup Language, was developed by Robin Miller. ML is a general purpose, functional programming language. Its strengths lie in language design and manipulation. ML is also used in bioinformatics, fincancial systems, genealogical database, and other such applications.

  • Ada

    Developed in 1980 by Dr. Jean Ichbiah but was enhanced in 1990 by Mr. Tucker Taft. Ada is designed for large, old applications, especially embedded systems, for its reliability and efficiency. Ada helps you design safe, and reliable, code, reduces development costs, and supports new technologies. Ada's an object oriented programming language. Ada was named after Ada Bryon.

  • C++

    Created by Bjarne Stroustrup, the motivation for C++ was derived from his experience in programming which was a result of his Ph.D thesis. C++ was incredibly helpful with large software development. Now it serves as a general purpose programming language. C++ has imperative, object-oriented, and generic programming features, and it also provides low level memory manipulation.

  • Visual Basic

    Visual Basic was created by Microsoft for its COM programming model. Derived from BASIC, Visual Basic enables the RAD (rapid application development) of GUI (graphical user interface.)

  • Python

    Python was designed by Guido van Rossum. Python is a gerneral purpose, high level programming language that emphasizes code readability, not to mention that it allows programmers to express fewer lines of code than other programming languages.

  • Delphi

    Delphi was developed by Borland. It was created to be a rapid application development tool for Windows.

  • PHP

    PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf. PHP was designed for the intent of website construction, but is also used in general purposes coding. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but it now stands for Hypertext Preprocessor.

  • Javascript

    Created by Brendan Eich, Javascript is a high level, untyped, and interpreted programming language. Javascript is one of the three essential technologies used in the production of World Wide Web. Almost every single website requires it.

  • Java

    Invented by James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton. Java is a general purpose, high level programming language. It was originally designed for interactive television but the idea was quickly trashed as it was too advanced for regular cable. Java has become as popular as other programming languages, such as C++, and is so common that there are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java.