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Plankalkul
Year Developed: 1948
Developed By: Konrad Zuse
Primary Purpose: To deveop a programming language. Was the first complete high level language
Acronym Meaning: Zuse wrote "Rechenplan allgemeiner Struktur" which developed into Plankalkül -
MATH-MATIC
Year Developed: 1957
Developed By: Charles Katz
Primary Purpose: To be an improvement over FORTRAN. Led to the development of the first English-language business data processing compiler. To allow fast and simple programming of math problems.
Acronym Meaning: Marketing name for the AT-3 compiler -
Fortran
Year Developed: 1957
Developed By: John Backus and IBM
Primary Purpose: To develop a more practical alternative to assembly language for programming theIBM 704 mainframe computer.To make entering equations into the computer easier.
Acronym Meaning: Stands for Formula Translating System -
Lisp
Year Developed: 1958
Developed By: John McCarthy
Primary Purpose: To be a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, also used as a programming language for artificial intelligence research.
Acronym Meaning: LISP derives from "LISt Processor" -
RPG
Year Developed: 1959
Developed By: IBM
Primary Purpose: To be a tool to replicate punched card processing on the IBM 1401. Was intended to facilitate ease of transition from tabulating equipment.
Acronym Meaning: RPG stands for Report Program Generator -
COBOL
Year Developed: 1959
Developed By: CODASYL- "Conference/Committee on Data Systems Languages"
Primary Purpose: To be used by business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.
Acronym Meaning: Common Business-Oriented Language -
BASIC
Year Developed: 1964
Developed By: John Kemeny & Thomas Kurtz
Primary Purpose: To be an easy to use language that people other than scientists and mathematicians could use on their personal computers.
Acronym Meaning: Comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz. Stands for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" -
LOGO
Year Developed: 1967
Developed By: Wally Feurzeig & Seymour Papert
Primary Purpose: To teach concepts of programming related to Lisp and other computer science concepts.
Acronym Meaning: Derived from the Greek logos meaning word or "thought" to distinguish itself from other programming languages. -
B
Year Developed: 1969
Developed By: Ken Thompson & Dennis Ritchie
Primary Purpose: To make a programming language with less components that could fit within current computer memory capacities. Designed for recursive, non-numeric, machine independent applications.
Acronym Meaning: Derived from BCPL, an earlier programming language -
PASCAL
Year Developed: 1970
Developed By: Niklaus Wirth
Primary Purpose: To be a small and efficient language to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring. It was intended to be used to teach students structured programming.
Acronym Meaning: Named in honor of the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal -
C
Year Developed: 1972
Developed By: Dennis Ritchie
Primary Purpose: To re-implement the Unix operating system and to be compiled using a straightforward compiler, provide low-level access to memory, provide language constructs that map efficiently to machine instructions, and to require minimal run-time support.
Acronym Meaning: Came after B, so it just followed the alphabet. -
ML
Year Developed: 1973
Developed By: Robin Milner
Primary Purpose: To develop proof tactics in the LCF theorem prover. Uses an algorithm that can automatically infer the types of most expressions without requiring explicit type annotations.
Acronym Meaning: ML stands for metalanguage -
SQL
Year Developed: 1974
Developed By: Donald D. Chamberlin & Raymond F. Boyce
Primary Purpose: To manage data held in a relational database management system, or to stream processing in a relational data stream management system. Designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's System R.
Acronym Meaning: Was originally SEQUEL (Structured English QUEry Language) but that was trademarked by an aircraft company, so it was shortened to SQL (Structured Query Language) -
ADA
Year Developed: 1980
Developed By: A team led by Jean Ichbiah of CII Honeywell Bull. They were under contract to the US Department of Defense.
Primary Purpose: In the 1970s the DoD was concerned about the number of different computer programming languages that they used for their computer system projects. Because of this, they needed to create a language that fit their requirements so they would be using a lower number them, and ADA was the result.
Acronym Meaning: Named after Ada Lovelace. -
C++
Year Developed: 1983
Developed By: Bjarne Stroustrup
Primary Purpose: To enhance C language. Good for large software development AND was fast, combining the good qualities from Simula & BCPL.
Acronym Meaning: New features were "added" to the C language -
Python
Year Developed: 1991
Developed By: Guido van Rossum
Primary Purpose: Easy to extend, supports multiple platforms. Supposed to just be an interpreter for the new scripting language then.
Acronym Meaning: The creator was a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus -
Visual Basic
Year Developed: 1991
Developed By: Microsoft & Alan Cooper
Primary Purpose: Easy to learn and use. A programmer can create an application using the components provided by the Visual Basic program itself.
Acronym Meaning: Is a part of Microsoft Visual Studio -
Delphi
Year Developed: 1995
Developed By: Embarcadero Technologies. Chief architect was Anders Hejlsberg.
Primary Purpose: To provide database connectivity to programmers as a key feature.
Acronym Meaning: Was originally the codename for the project. In reference the Oracle at Delphi because a popular database package then was Oracle database. -
Java
Year Developed: 1995
Developed By: James Gosling
Primary Purpose: There were 5 primary goals for the language, to be simple, object-oriented, and familiar,
Ito be robust and secure, to be architecture-neutral and portable,to execute with high performance and to be interpreted, threaded, and dynamic.
Acronym Meaning: Java name is derived from java coffee. -
Javascript
Year Developed: 1995
Developed By: Brendan Eich
Primary Purpose: To be a lightweight interpreted language that would complement Java by appealing to nonprofessional programmers
Acronym Meaning: Was originally LiveScript but was changed to support Java technology -
PHP
Year Developed: 1995
Developed By: Rasmus Lerdorf
Primary Purpose: To build simple, dynamic web applications. Was actually not intended to be a new programming language.
Acronym Meaning: Personal Home Page