Programming Languages Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    Developed by Konrad Zuse for engineering purposes and means "Plan Calculus" or "formal system for planning".
  • Fortran

    Developed by John Backus for scientific and engineering applications and is derived from Formula Translation.
  • Math-Matic

    Developed by Remington Rand to provide algebraic-style expressions & floating point arithmetic & arrays for UNIVAC 1 & 2; the name was from Flow-Matic but with more Math.
  • Lisp

    Developed by John McCarthy as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs and derived from LISt Processor.
  • COBOL

    Developed by Grace Hopper to create a portable programming language for data processing and is the acronym Common Business-Oriented Language.
  • RPG

    Developed by IBM to recreate punched card processing on the IBM 1401 and is the acronym Report Program Generator.
  • Basic

    Developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz so students can write mainframe computer programs for Dartmouth Time-sharing System and is the acronym Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
  • LOGO

    Developed by Wally Feurzeig to teach Lisp related programming & "body-syntonic reasoning" and means logos in Greek or "thought".
  • B

    Developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for "recursive, non-numeric, machine independent applications" and derived from BCPL.
  • PASCAL

    Developed by Niklaus Wirth to encourage good programming practices using structured programming & data structuring and was named in honor of Blaise Pascal.
  • C

    Developed by Dennis Ritchie to re-implement the Unix operating system and was named because C comes after B alphabetically.
  • ML

    Developed by Robin Milner to develop proof tactics in the LCF Theorum Prover and is the acronym Meta Language.
  • SQL

    Developed by Donald Chamberlin & Raymond Boyce to manage data held in a Rational Database Management System and is the acronym Structured Query Language.
  • Ada

    Developed by Jean Ichbiah to usurp 450+ programming languages used by DoD and was named after Ada Lovelace, who was credited as the first computer programmer.
  • C++

    Developed by Bjarne Stroustrup to add features to C for program organization and was named for the evolutionary changes to C.
  • Python

    Developed by Guido van Rossum as a successor to the ABC Language with exception handling & interfacing with Amoeba and wa snamed after the "Monty Python Flying Circus".
  • Visual Basic

    Developed by Microsoft to accommodate a steep learning curve and was named of a combination between Ruby interface generator and the "Basic" language.
  • Delphi

    Developed by Anders Hejlsberg as a rapid application development tool for windows & is the successor of Turbo Pascal and is a reference to the "Oracle at Delphi"
  • Java

    Developed by James Gosling to allow application developers to "write once,run anywhere" and was named after Java Coffee.
  • PHP

    Developed by Rasmus Lerdorf for web development and is the acronym Personal Home Page.
  • Javascript

    Developed by Brenden Eich to make webpages interactive & provide online programs and was named to make it a complimentary scripting language to go with Java.