Programming Languages Timeline

  • Plankalkul

    Year: 1948 (First Released)
    People: Konrad Zuse
    Purpose: Plankalkul was designed for engineering purposes. It was the first high-level programming language designed for a computer
  • FORTAN

    Year: 1957 (First Released)
    People: John Backus, IBM
    Purpose: Fortran is used for numeric computation and scientific computing
    Acronym: Formula Translation
  • MATH-MATIC

    Year: 1957 (First Released)
    People: Remington Rand
    Purpose: A business-oriented language that provided algebraic-style expressions and floating-point arithmetic, in arrays
    Acronym: The marketing name for the AT-3 (Algebraic Translator 3) compiler
  • LISP

    Year: 1958 (First Released)
    People: Steve Russell, Timothy P. Hart, and Mike Levin
    Purpose: Lisp was created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs
  • COBOL

    Year: 1959 (First Released)
    People: Howard Bromberg, Howard Discount, Vernon Reeves, Jean E. Sammet, William Selden, Gertrude Tierney
    Purpose: COBOL is a compiled english like computer programming language designed for business use
    Acronym: Common Business-Oriented Language
  • RPG

    Year: 1959 (First Released)
    People: IBM
    Purpose: RPG was a tool designed to replicate punched card processing
    Acronym: Report Program Generator
  • BASIC

    Year: 1964 (First Released)
    People: John G. Kenemy, Thomas E. Kurtz
    Purpose: It was made for easy use and so that anyone can (learn to) program
    Acronym: Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
  • LOGO

    Year: 1967 (First Released)
    People: Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert
    Purpose: Originally created to teach programming related to Lisp.
  • B

    Year: 1969 (First Released)
    People: Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie
    Purpose: B was designed for recursive, non-numeric, machine independent applications, such as system and language software
  • PASCAL

    Year: 1970 (First Released)
    People: Niklaus Wirth
    Purpose: PASCAL was designed to be a small, efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices
    Acronym: In honor of the French Mathematician and Philosopher Blaise Pascal
  • C

    Year: 1972
    People: Dennis Ritchie, Bell Labs
    Purpose: C provides constructs that map efficiently to typical machine instructions
  • ML

    Year: 1973 (First Released)
    People: Robin Miller, University of Edinburgh
    Purpose: It was conceived to develop proof tactics in the LCF theorem prover
    Acronym: MetaLanguage
  • SQL

    Year: 1974 (First Released)
    People: Donald D. Chamberlin, Raymond F. Boyce
    Purpose:
    Acronym: Structured Query Language
  • ADA

    Year: 1980 (First Released)
    People: Jean Ichbiah (created ADA 83), Tucker Taft (ADA-95,2005,2012)
    Purpose: Ada improves code safety and maintainability by using the compiler to find errors in favor of runtime errors
    Acronym: No Acronym, but is named after Ada Lovelace; the first programmer
  • C++

    Year: 1983 (First Released)
    People: Bjarne Stroustrup
    Purpose: It was designed with a bias toward system programming and embedded, resource-constrained and large systems, with performance, efficiency and flexibility of use
  • Pyhton

    Year: 1991 (First Appeared)
    People: Guido Van Rossum
    Purpose: Python was created for general-purpose programming.
  • Visual Basic

    Year: 1991 (First Appeared)
    People: Microsoft
    Purpose: Visual Basic derived from BASIC and was designed to be easy for people to learn how to program
  • Java

    Year: 1995 (First Released)
    People: Developed- Sun Microsystems
    Purpose: Java was designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible
  • Delphi

    Year: 1995 (First Released)
    People: Borland
    Purpose: Delphi is a programming language and software development kit (SDK) for desktop, mobile, web, and console applications
  • JavaScript

    Year: 1995 (First Released)
    People: Developed-Netscape Communications. Corp., Mozilla Foundation, Ecma Int.
    Purpose: (Alongside HTML and CSS) Javascript is one of the three core technologies of World Wide Web content production
  • PHP

    Year: 1995 (First Appeared)
    People: Rasmus Lerdorf
    Purpose: PHP was designed primarily for web development, but also used as a general-purpose programming language
    Acronym: Hypertext Preprocessor (Originally Personal Home Page)