Programming Languages Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    Created by Konrad Zuse. Was designed for engineering purposes and was the world's first complete high level language.
  • Fortran

    Created by IBM. Was the world's first high-level programming language designed specifically for writing programs involving mathematical and scientific computations.
  • MATH-MATIC

    Created by a team led by Charles Katz. Provided algebraic-style expressions, floating-point arithmetic, and arrays.
  • Lisp

    Created by John McCarthy. Commonly used for artificial intelligence programming. Stands for List Processing.
  • COBOL

    Created by CODASYL as part of a US Department of Defense effort to create a portable programming language for data processing. Stands for COmmon Business-Oriented Language.
  • RPG

    Created by IBM for punched card machines. RPG stands for Report Program Generator.
  • BASIC

    Created by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. Is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design is made for ease of use. BASIC stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
  • LOGO

    Created by Wally Fuerzeig as an educational programming language. Used mostly to create graphics.
  • B

    Created by Ken Thompson. Is an interpreted programming language for mini-computers.
  • PASCAL

    Created by Niklaus Wirth. Developed for teaching programming as a systematic discipline and to develop reliable and efficient programs. Was named after Blaise Pascal, who made the first calculator.
  • ML

    Created by Robin Milner and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh. ML stands for Meta Language.
  • C

    Created by Dennis Ritchie. Was developed to write the UNIX operating system cleanly.
  • ADA

    Created by Jean Ichbiah. Is a structured, statically typed, and object-oriented high-level computer programming language. Named after Ada Lovelace, who is known as the first computer programmer.
  • C++

    Created by Bjarne Stroustrup. Was made as an extension of the C language.
  • SQL

    Created by Donald D. Chamberlain and Raymond F. Boyce. Is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system. SQL stands for Structured Query Language.
  • Python

    Created by Guildo van Rossum. The goal was to be capable of exception handling and interfacing with the Amoeba operating system. Was named after Monty Python.
  • Visual Basic

    Created by Microsoft to make it easier to program using Windows computers.
  • PHP

    Created by Rasmus Lerdorf. Is an extension of C that works with web forms and to communicate with databases. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but it now stands for Hypertext Preprocessor.
  • Javascript

    Created by Brendan Eich. Is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers.
  • Java

    Created by James Gosling. Is a general purpose, high-level, object-oriented, cross-platform programming language designed for handheld devices and set-top boxes
  • Delphi

    Created by CodeGear as an integrated development environment (IDE) for rapid application development of software.