Programming Languages Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    Plankalkul was designed by Konrad Zuse. Its purpose was to be used for engineering. Plankalkul is German for "Plan Calculus."
  • Fortran

    Fortran was developed by John Backus. Fortran was developed to provide a practical language for scienctist and engineers. The name Fortran was derived from Formula Translating System.
  • MATH-MATIC

    MATH-MATIC was developed by Grace Hopper. Thepurpose of MATH-MATIC was to provide a language that was better than FORTRAN. MATH-MATIC was the commercial name for the first compiler.
  • Lisp

    Lisp was developed by Jhon McCarthy. It's purpose was to provide a practical way to preform mathmatic notation. The name Lisp comes from list processor.
  • COBOL

    COBOL was developed by the Coference on Data System Languages. It's purpose was to create a common language to be used by businesses. COBOL stands for Common Business Oriented Langunge.
  • RPG

    RPG was developed by IBM. The purpose was to replicate puch card processing. RPG stands for Report Program Generator.
  • BASIC

    BASIC was developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurts. The purpose of the language was to allow anyone to learn programming, not just mathmatecians and scientist. BASIC stands for Beginner's All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
  • LOGO

    LOGO was developed by Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert. The purpose of LOGO was to be an educational tool for children. The name LOGO is derived from "logos", which is greek for "Thought."
  • B

    The B programming language was developed by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. Thhe purpose of the language was to preform non numeric operations. The language got it's name from BCPL, a language B was hevily based on.
  • Pascal

    Pascal was developed by Niklaus Wirth. The purpose of Pascal was to teach students good programming practices. The language was named after Blaise Pascal, a matmatecian.
  • C

    C was developed by Dennis Ritche and Ken Thompson . The purpose of the language was to serve as an improved version of B, with data types and structures. The language got its name because it was based off of the programming language B.
  • ML

    Ml was developed by Robin MIller. ML's was created for the purpose of providing proof tactics for an automated theorom prover. It's name stands for metlanguage.
  • C++

    C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup. The language was designed to add classes and object oriented programming to the C language. C++ got its name because "++" is the increment operator in C languages, therefore C++ is better than C.
  • SQL

    SQL was developed by Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce. The language was developed for the purpose of managing data in database managment systems. SQL stands for structured Query Language.
  • Ada

    Ada was develiped by High Order Language Working Group (HOWLG). HOWLG was a working group formed to develop a secure, high level programming language for the United States Department of Defense. The language was named Ada after Augusta Ada King; a mathematician credited with being the first programmer.
  • Python

    Python was developed by Guido van Rossum. Its purpose was to increase code readability and minimize the lines of code that needed to be written. The language was named after "Monty Python's Flying Circus."
  • Visual BASIC

    Visual BASIC was developed by Microsoft. Visual BASIC was developed to be a easy-to-learn programming language. Visual BASIC got its name becaus it had a visual interface and was based off of BASIC.
  • Delphi

    Delphi is a language developed by Borland. Delphi was developed to provide rapid development for Windows. The name Delphi was a reference to the Oracle of Delphi from greek mythology.
  • JavaScript

    JavaScript was developed by Brendan Eich. The purpose of JavaScript was to create a complementary scripting language to Java. JavaScript got its name because it was a scripting language developed by the same company in charge of Java.
  • Java

    Java was developed by James Gosling. The purpose of the language was to let developers compile code that could run on all java platforms. Java was named after Java coffe.
  • PHP

    PHP was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf. The purpose of PHP was to provide a language for web development. PHP stood for Personal Home Page.