Computer programming is the very basis of the digital age that we live in today. Every time you like a post on social media, send an email, or set an alarm on your phone, a programming language is working behind the scenes – pulling the strings.
But where did it all begin? And what spurred its growth into the leading industry that exists today? Most of all, why is knowing the history of programming languages important to hiring developers?
Join us, as we embark on a tour of the history of programming languages. This retrospective will demonstrate how much computer programming has developed over the years. It’ll take you back from the early languages and complicated machine code to sophisticated human-readable language that powers our favorite technologies today.
The first programming language
Did you know that the first programming language was invented way back in 1843? Ada Lovelace came up with the first-ever machine algorithm for an early computing machine that she wrote down on a piece of paper because no computers existed at the time! Programming languages have obviously come a long way since then but in order to understand the history of programming languages, one must first acknowledge their origin.
History of programming languages: A timeline
Listed below is a timeline of the history of programming languages. The first known programming languages were complicated machine codes that were manually inputted into early computing machines. As you’ll discover, computer programming developed quickly from machine codes to fully automated human-readable code.
1843: Ada Lovelace’s machine algorithm
Ada Lovelace invents the first-ever machine algorithm for Charles Babbage’s Difference Machine that lays the foundation for all programming languages.
1944-45: Plankalkül
Somewhere between 1944-45, Konrad Zuse developed the first ‘real’ programming language called Plankalkül (Plan Calculus). Zeus’s language (among other things) allowed for the creations of procedures, which stored chunks of code that could be invoked over and over to perform routine operations.
1949: Assembly Language
Assembly language was used in the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC). Assembly language was a type of low-level programming language that simplified the language of machine code. In other words, the specific instructions necessary to operate a computer.
1949: Shortcode
Shortcode (or Short-order code), was the first High-Level Language (HLL) suggested by John McCauley in 1949. However, it was William Schmitt who implemented it for the BINAC computer the same year and for the UNIVAC in 1950.
1952: Autocode
Autocode was a general term used for a family of programming languages. First developed by Alick Glennie for the Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester, Autocode was the first-ever compiled language to be implemented meaning that it can be translated directly into machine code using a program called a compiler. Autocode was used on the Ferranti Pegasus and Sirius early computing machines in addition to the Mark 1.
1957: FORTRAN
FORmula TRANslation or FORTRAN was created by John Backus and is considered to be the oldest programming language in use today. The programming language was created for high-level scientific, mathematical, and statistical computations. FORTRAN is still in use today in some of the world’s most advanced supercomputers.
1958: ALGOL (Algorithmic Language)
Algorithmic language or ALGOL was created by a joint committee of American and European computer scientists. ALGOL served as the starting point for the development of some of the most important programming languages including Pascal, C, C++, and Java.
1958: LISP (List Processor)
List processor or LISP was invented by John McCarthy at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology (MIT). Originally purposed for artificial intelligence, LISP is one of the oldest programming languages still in use today and can be used in the place of Ruby or Python. Companies such as Acceleration, Boeing, and Genworks are still using LISP in their tech stacks.
1959: COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language)
Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL), is the programming language behind many credit card processors, ATMs, telephone and cell calls, hospital signals, and traffic signals systems (just to name a few). The development of the language was led by Dr. Grace Murray Hopper and was designed so that it could run on all brands and types of computers. COBOL is still used to this day primarily for banking and gamification systems.
1964: BASIC (Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)
Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code or BASIC was developed by a group of students at Dartmouth College. The language was written for students who did not have a strong understanding of mathematics or computers. The language was developed further by Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen and became the first marketable product of the company.
1970: PASCAL
Named after the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, Niklaus Wirth developed the programming language in his honor. It was developed as a learning tool for computer programming which meant it was easy to learn. It was favored by Apple in the company’s early days, because of its ease of use and power.
1972: Smalltalk
Developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre by Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, and Dan Ingalls, Smalltalk allowed for computer programmers to modify code on the fly. It introduced a variety of programming language aspects that are visible languages of today such as Python, Java, and Ruby. Companies such as Leafly, Logitech, and CrowdStrike state they use Smalltalk in their tech stacks.
1972: C
Developed by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. It was called C because it was based on an earlier language called ‘B’. Many of the current leading languages are derivatives of C including; C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, and Python. It also has been/still being used by huge companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple.
1972: SQL (SEQUEL at the time)
SQL was first developed by IBM researchers Raymond Boyce and Donald Chamberlain. SEQUEL (as it was referred to at the time), is used for viewing and changing information that is stored in databases. Nowadays the language is an acronym – SQL, which stands for Structured Query Language. There are a plethora of companies that use SQL and some of them include Microsoft and Accenture.
1980/81: Ada
Ada was originally designed by a team led by Jean Ichbiah of CUU Honeywell Bull under contract to the United States Department of Defense. Named after the mid-19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace, Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, wide-spectrum, and object-oriented high-level programming language. Ada was extended from other popular programming languages at the time such as Pascal. Ada is used for air-traffic management systems in countries such as Australia, Belgium, and Germany as well as a host of other transport and space projects.
1983: C++
Bjarne Stroustrup modified the C language at the Bell Labs, C++ is an extension of C with enhancements such as classes, virtual functions, and templates. It has been listed in the top 10 programming languages since 1986 and received Hall of Fame status in 2003. C++ is used in MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, game engines, and other high-performance software.
Comments are closed