Programming Languages Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    A computer language designed for engineering purposes by Konrad Zuse between 1943 and 1945. It was the first high-level non-von Neumann programming language to be designed for a computer. Also, notes survive with scribblings about such a plan calculation dating back to 1941.
  • Fortran

    FORTRAN was developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus, and was first published in 1957. The name FORTRAN is an acronym for FORmula TRANslation, because it was designed to allow easy translation of math formulas into code.
  • MATH-MATIC

    MATH-MATIC was developed by Charles Katz and was the early programming language for UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II. MATH-MATIC was intended as an improvement over FORTRAN. MATH-MATIC led to the development of the first English-language business data processing compiler, B-0 (FLOW-MATIC).
  • LISP

    is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized Polish prefix notation. Originally specified in 1958 and designed by John McCarthy, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today; only Fortran is older (by one year).
  • COBOL

    COLBOL is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. It was primarily designed by Grace Hopper.
  • RPG

    Having been developed by IBM in 1959 as the Report Program Generator, RPG is a high-level programming language (HLL) for business applications. While IBM is the creator and primary vendor of RPG, the language is available from other mainframe and microcomputer manufacturers, including Unisys.
  • BASIC

    BASIC was designed by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz and is an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It was made to provide computer access to non-science students.
  • LOGO

    LOGO was developed by Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert and it is a computer programming language used for functional programming. The first implementation of Logo, called Ghost, was written in LISP on an SDS 950. The goal was to create a math land where kids could play with words and sentences.
  • B

    B is a programming language that is extinct, having been superseded by the C language. It was mostly the work of Ken Thompson, with contributions from Dennis Ritchie, and first appeared circa 1969.
  • PASCAL

    Developed by Niklaus Wirth, PASCAL was made to teach students structured programming. PASCAL is a procedural language that includes the traditional array of ALGOL-like control structures with reserved words such as if, then, else, while and for.
  • SQL

    SQL is a database computer language designed for managing data in relational database management systems (RDBMS), and originally based upon relational algebra and calculus. SQL was developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce. SQL was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original quasi-relational database management system.
  • C

    C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie. C was designed for implementing system software, but it is also widely used for developing portable application software. In C, all executable code is contained within functions. C is one of the most popular programming languages of all time.
  • ML

    ML is a general-purpose functional programming language developed by Robin Milner and others in the early 1970s at the University of Edinburgh, whose syntax is inspired by ISWIM. Historically, ML stands for metalanguage
  • C++

    C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup and it is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. C++ is one of the most popular programming languages ever created. C++ began as enhancements to C, first adding classes, then virtual functions, operator overloading, multiple inheritance, templates, and exception handling among other features.
  • ADA

    Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, wide-spectrum, and object-oriented high-level computer programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages. It was designed by a team led by Jean Ichbiah of CII Honeywell Bull.
  • Visual Basic

    Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model. Visual Basic was derived from BASIC and enables the rapid application development of graphical user interface applications, access to databases using Data Access Objects, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects
  • Python

    Python is a popular general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python's syntax allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code than would be possible in languages such as C, and the language provides constructs intended to enable clear programs on both a small and large scale. It was designed by Guido van Rossum.
  • Java

    JAVA was developed by James Gosling and was originally designed for interactive television, but it was too advanced for the television industry at the time. Java was aimed to implement a virtual machine and a language that had a familiar C/C++ style of notation. Java was built almost exclusively as an object-oriented language.
  • Delphi

    The Delphi programming language was developed by Borland and is the descendant of Turbo Pascal. Delphi was released in February 1995. Delphi is a native code compiler that runs under Window v3.1 or Windows '95. Delphi is essentially object Pascal with similar programming tools found in Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0.
  • JavaScript

    is one of the world's most popular programming languages. Virtually every personal computer in the world has at least one JavaScript interpreter installed on it and in active use. JavaScript's popularity is due entirely to its role as the scripting language of the WWW. It was developed by Brandon Elch, in 1995
  • PHP

    PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. It was 0riginally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995, the reference implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group. While PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, it now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, a recursive acronym.