Programming Language History

Programming languages have been in existence long before the development of the modern computer. There are programs written for scrolls used in piano players and for programmable looms in the 19th century. Punch cards encoded data for workers to clock in and out of the workplace at the beginning of the 20th century. The first electronic computers were developed in the 1940’s based on algorythyms, which are mathematical calculations. The first computers used machine language programs and later Assembly languages. In the 1950’s FORTRAN, COBOL and LLSP programming languages were developed and all later languages were based on these.

The programming languages we use today were all developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s. These included:

APL
PL/1
Simula
Smalltalk
C
Prolog
ML

Consolidation of the programming languages began in the 1980’s. C++ was one such combination of systems and combine object programming. There was also a concentration on the development of programming languages for large-scale systems using modules. Perl was one programming language released in the late 1980’s and was common in creating web sites with the high demand for Internet use. Java became the language of choice for servers.

Some programming languages are specific to certain domains, such as SQL. This language manipulates and returns sets of data. Perl, on the other hand, can hold multiple programs and numerous JavaScript programs.

The following is a simple timeline of the development of various programming languages since 1980:

1980 – Smalltalk –80; Modula –2; Franz Lisp

1982 – ISO Pascal; PostScript

1983 – Ada, C++

1985 – Vanilla SNOBOL4; Methods

1986 – Smalltalk/V; Object Pascal; Turbo Prolog; Actor

1989 – C++ 2.0

1990 - C++ 2.1; FORTRAN90

1991 – Visual basic

1992 – Dylan

new programming languages are continuing to be developed as the need arises for various programs and for different types of computers.