CMP 332
SURVEY OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
HISTORY OF PROGRAMING LANGUAGES
Disclaimer: Note that the Contents of this
LECTURE TWO
slide derive from various online resources,
suited for learning purposes and are not
Delivered By: Dr. T. A. Olowookere
originally drafted by the Compiler
Lesson objectives
By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:
Describe the history of specific programming languages
FIRST DECADE
SECOND DECADE
THIRD DECADE
FOURTH DECADE
FIFTH DECADE
SIXTH DECADE
SEVENTH DECADE
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
The programming languages evolved to a great extent over past few decades from
Assembly Language to Kotlin and Swift. This slide lists down the evolution of these
languages over time since 1950. It is broken into decades:
FIRST DECADE: 1951 - 1960
The long-lasting languages that evolved over this decade are Fortran and COBOL and
laid down the foundation for further evolution.
Assembly Language - the first in this list is a low-level programming language and works
closely to hardware and specific to computer architecture.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
FIRST DECADE: 1951 - 1960
1951: Assembly Language: First widely used in the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic
Calculator, assembly language is a type of low-level computer programming language that
simplifies the language of machine code, the specific instructions needed to tell the computer
what to do.
1957: Fortran: A computer programming language created by John Backus for complicated
scientific, mathematical, and statistical work, Fortran stands for Formula Translation. It is the
one of the oldest computer programming languages still used today.
1958: Algol: Created by a committee for scientific use, Algol stands for Algorithmic Language.
Algol served as a starting point in the development of languages such as Pascal, C, C++, and
Java.
1959: COBOL: Created by Dr. Grace Murray Hopper as a computer programming language
that could run on all brands and types of computers, COBOL stands for COmmon Business
Oriented Language. It is used in ATMs, credit card processing, telephone systems, hospital
and government computers, automotive systems, and traffic signals. In the movie The
Terminator, pieces of COBOL source code were used in the Terminator’s vision display.
1959: LISP: Created by John McCarthy of MIT, LISP is still in use. It stands for LISt Processing
language. It was originally created for artificial intelligence research but today can be used in
situations where Ruby or Python are used.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
SECOND DECADE: 1961 - 1970
The most important language that came out during this period is SNOBOL the successor
of COBOL developed at AT & T Bell Laboratories by David J. Farber, Ralph E. Griswold,
and Ivan P. Polonsky.
Simula is another important language since Simula 67 developed in this series was first
Object Oriented Language (OOL).
By the end of this decade, PASCAL came out as another promising programming
language introducing structured programming.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
SECOND DECADE: 1961 – 1970
1964: BASIC: Developed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College
so that students who did not have a strong technical or mathematical understanding
could still use computers, it stands for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction
Code. A modified version of BASIC was written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. This was to
become the first Microsoft product.
1970: Pascal: Developed by Niklaus Wirth, Pascal was named in honor of the French
mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It is easy to learn and was
originally created as a tool for teaching computer programming. Pascal was the main
language used for software development in Apple’s early years.
Skype is said to be developed in Pascal.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
THIRD DECADE: 1971 - 1980
This decade introduced C which is still being widely used to develop programs specific
to hardware. It's one of the most popular languages and still in use by major industries.
SQL emerged as the first language specific to manage data.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
THIRD DECADE: 1971 - 1980
1972: Smalltalk: Developed by Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, and Dan Ingalls at Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center, Smalltalk allowed computer programmers to modify code on the
fly and also introduced other aspects now present in common computer programming
languages including Python, Java, and Ruby.
1972: C: Developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs, C is considered by many to be the first
high-level language. A high-level computer programming language is closer to human
language and more removed from the machine code. C was created so that an operating
system called Unix could be used on many different types of computers. It has influenced
many other languages, including Ruby, C# , Go, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, and Python.
1978: SQL: SQL was developed by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce at IBM.
SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It is used for viewing and changing
information that is stored in databases. SQL uses command sentences called queries to
add, remove, or view data.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
FOURTH DECADE: 1981 - 1990
MATLAB, FoxPro and Objective C evolved as major languages during this decade where
MATLAB was widely used for algorithms and visualizations.
FoxPro is a mix of programs having DBMS concepts and it's also Object Oriented
Programming Language.
Objective C is an object-oriented programming language and majorly used by Apple for
OS X and iOS development.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
FOURTH DECADE: 1981 - 1990
1983: Objective-C: Created by Brad Cox and Tom Love, Objective-C is the main
computer programming language used when writing software for macOS and iOS,
Apple’s operating systems.
1983: C++: C++ is an extension of the C language and was developed by Bjarne
Stroustrup. It is one of the most widely used languages in the world. C++ is used in game
engines and high-performance software like Adobe Photoshop. Most packaged software
is still written in C++.
1984: MATLAB: Developed by Cleve Moler. MATLAB stands for MATrix LABoratory. It
is one of the best computer programming languages for writing mathematical programs
and is mainly used in Mathematics, Research, Engineering and Education. It can also be
used to create two- and three-dimensional graphics.
1987: Perl: Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a scripting language
designed for text editing. Its purpose was to make report processing easier. It is now
widely used for many purposes, including Linux system administration, Web
development, and network programming.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
FIFTH DECADE: 1991 - 2000
This decade introduced very interesting languages starting with Python in 1991 which is
now widely used as an alternate of PHP and Java.
Java was released by the mid of this decade and soon became the de-facto standard of the
enterprise with its inbuilt security features.
Ruby is another important language released in 1995 and attracted programmers to give
their hands on it. The Rails framework open up doors to website and application
development by simplifying repetitive tasks.
PHP was also released during the same year i.e. 1995 and became the default choice for
web development due to the easy learning curve.
Javascript and ActionScript have also emerged as frontend languages focusing on the UI
part.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
FIFTH DECADE: 1991 - 2000
1991: Python: Designed by Guido Van Rossum, Python is easier to read and requires fewer
lines of code than many other computer programming languages. It was named after the British
comedy group Monty Python. Popular sites like Instagram use frameworks that are written in
Python.
1991: Visual Basic: Developed by Microsoft, Visual Basic allows programmers to choose and
change pre-selected chunks of code in a drag-and-drop fashion through a graphical user
interface (GUI).
1993: R: Developed by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, New
Zealand, R is named after the first names of the first two authors. It is mostly used by
statisticians and those performing different types of data analysis.
1995: Java: Originally called Oak, Java was developed by Sun Microsystems. It was intended
for cable boxes and hand-held devices but was later enhanced so it could be used to deliver
information on the World Wide Web. Java is everywhere, from computers to smartphones to
parking meters. Three billion devices run Java!
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
FIFTH DECADE: 1991 - 2000
1995: PHP: Created by Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP is used mostly for Web development and is
usually run on Web servers. It originally stood for Personal Home Page, as it was used by
Lerdorf to manage his own online information. PHP is now widely used to build websites
and blogs. WordPress, a popular website creation tool, is written using PHP.
1995: Ruby: Ruby was created by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, who combined parts of
his favorite languages to form a new general-purpose computer programming language
that can perform many programming tasks. It is popular in Web application development.
Ruby code executes more slowly, but it allows for computer programmers to quickly put
together and run a program.
1995: JavaScript: Created in just 10 days by Brendan Eich, this language is mostly used to
enhance many Web browser interactions. Almost every major website uses Javascript.
2000: C# : Developed by Microsoft with the goal of combining the computing ability of
C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic, C# is based on C++ and is similar to Java in many
aspects. It is used in almost all Microsoft products and is primarily used for developing
desktop applications.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
SIXTH DECADE: 2001 - 2010
C# was introduced by Microsoft at the beginning of this decade and became the
programmers choice for Desktop and Web application development.
It's object-oriented and the syntax is somewhat closer to Java.
Go and Rust were released by the end of this decade focusing on system programming
and competent to each other.
Golang (a.k.a Go) is majorly used for developing Microservices. Learning Rust is a bit
difficult whereas Go is easy to learn.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
SIXTH DECADE: 2001 - 2010
2003: Scala: Created by Martin Odersky. Scala is a computer programming language that
combines functional programming, which is mathematical, with object-oriented
programming, which is organized around data that controls access to code. Its
compatibility with Java makes it helpful in Android development.
2003: Groovy: Developed by James Strachan and Bob McWhirter, Groovy is derived from
Java and improves the productivity of developers because it is easy to learn and concise.
2009: Go: Go was developed by Google to address problems that can occur in large
software systems. Since computer and technology use is much different today than it was
when languages such as C++, Java, and Python were introduced and put to use,
problems arose when huge computer systems became common. Go was intended to
improve the working environment for programmers so they could write, read, and
maintain large software systems more efficiently.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
SEVENTH DECADE: 2011 - Present (2020)
2011: Kotlin has emerged as the major alternative to Java since Java was overtaken by
Oracle.
Kotlin is being widely used for Android development with its easy syntax as compared
to Java.
Swift is another important language introduced by Apple as an alternative to Objective
C.
Swift is easier to learn as compared to Objective C and also need less code, hence
becoming a popular choice of programmers to develop iOS applications.
2014: Swift: Developed by Apple as a replacement for C, C++, and Objective-C, Swift is
supposed to be easier to use and allows less room for mistakes. It is versatile and can be
used for desktop and mobile apps and cloud services.
HISTORY/ EVOLUTION OF PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGES
SEVENTH DECADE: 2011 - Present (2020)
REFERENCES
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