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Konrad Zuse created Plankalkul for engineering purposes. Plankalkul is german for "Plan Calculus."
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John Backus and an IBM team created Fortran as a language to be expressed in mathematical equations. The original name,
IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System, was shortened to Fortran. -
Grace Hopper and Charles Katz created MATH-MATIC as a better version of a previous innovation: A-0 compiler. Algebraic Translator 3 compiler was the real name of this program and MATH-MATIC was the marking name.
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Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) created COBOL for business users. The name Common Business Oriented Language reflects that but was shortened to COBOL.
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IBM created RPG as a high-level program for business applications. RPG stands for Report Program Generator.
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John McCarthy at MIT created Lisp as a way for computers to process lists of data. List processing was the orignial name but was shortened to just Lisp.
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John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz
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Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert created LOGO to be a sort of Lisp without parenthesis. The name is taken from the Greek word logos which means thought.
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Niklaus Wirth created PASCAL to encourage organized programming practices. PASCAL named after the famous mathematician Blaise Pascal.
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Dennis M. Ritchie (Bell Laboratories) created C to give programmers more control over individual information pieces as well as have independent programming. Since many of C's features were taken from B it is called C.
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Robin Milner developed ML as an accessory to the LCF theorem prover. ML stands for MetaLanguage.
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BM using Dr. E.F. Codd's ideas created a "definitive model for relational database management systems (RDBMS)." Structured Query Language was shortened to SQL (pronounced sequal).
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Dr. Jean Ichbiah created ADA as a high-level language for the embedded systems of the US department of Defense. The name is an homage to Ada Lovelace, who is considered by many to be the first computer programmer.
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Bjarne Stroustrup created C++ essentially to extend C so it would work better for industrial and educational uses. Since C++ is baasically C part two it is called C++.
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Microsoft in conjunction with Tripod created Visual Basic as Microsoft's first visual development tool to keep them competitive. Since it was built on the older program, BASIC, it is called Visual Basic.
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Guido van Rossum created Python to provide a program to write clear programs in both small and large scale. Python is named after a BBC comedy series, Monty Python's Flying Circus, that aired in the 1970s.
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Rasmus Lerdorf originally created PHP to track visits to his resume online. PHP stands for Personal Home Page Tools.
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Borland created Delphi as a windows programming tool. The name is taken from the Oracle at Delphi in Greek mythology.
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James Gosling created Java to be a universal language of sorts that would not be limited to one application. The original name of "Oak" was scrapped due to copyright issues and eventually the name ended up being Java.
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Brendan Eich created Javascript to give web designers the opportunity to insert code into their websites. It was originally called "livescript" but it was changed to Javascript for unknown reasons.
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D. M. Ritchie and K. L. Thompson created B for system programing and non-numeric applications. The name B was shortened from BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language).
