TIMELINE History of Programming Languages
Predecessor(s) YEAR PRODUCT -- Developer, Company
* 1840~ FIRST PROGRAM -- Ada Lovelace ( * 1848 Boolean algebra -- George Boole ) * 1934 Lambda calculus -- Alonzo Church * 1947 Plankalkül -- Konrad Zuse * 1951 A-0 -- Grace Hopper A-0 1952 FLOW-MATIC -- Grace Hopper MATH-MATIC 1955 FORTRAN -- Backus FLOW-MATIC 1957 COMTRAN -- Bob Bemer ( * 1957 General Problem Solver -- Newell ) FORTRAN 1958 FORTRAN II -- Backus FORTRAN 1958 ALGOL * 1959 LISP McCarthy FLOW-MATIC COMTRAN 1960 COBOL The CodasylCommittee ALGOL 1960 Algol 60 FORTRAN II 1962 FORTRAN IV * 1962 APL -- Iverson ALGOL60 1962 Simula FORTRAN II 1962 SNOBOL -- Griswold, et al. ALGOL60 1963 CPL -- Barron, Strachey, et al. SNOBOL 1962 SNOBOL3 -- Griswold, et al. ALGOL60 1964 PL 1 FORTRAN II 1964 BASIC -- Kemeney and Kurtz FORTRAN II 1966 FORTRAN IV ALGOL60 1966 Coral66 Real Time version of Algol 60 CPL 1967 BCPL -- Martin Richards Fortran LISP 1967 MUMPS -- Massachusetts General Hospital Simula 1967 Simula67 SNOBOL3 1967 SNOBOL4 -- Griswold, et al. Algol60 1968 Algol68 -- Wijngaarten, et al. 1970 Forth Chuck Moore ALGOL60 1971 Pascal -- Nicklas Wirth, Jensen Simula67 1972 SMALLTALK programming language|SMALLTALK B BCPL 1972 C -- Dennis Ritchie * 1973 PROLOG -- Alain Colmeraurer LISP 1975 Scheme -- Gerald Jay Sussman, Guy Lewis Steele Jr. BASIC 1975 Altair BASIC -- Bill Gates, Steve Allen MUMPS 1977 X11.1 ANSI Standard MUMPS FORTRAN IV 1978 FORTRAN77 ( * 1978 VISICALC -- Dan Bricklin, Frankston ) ( * 1979 VULCAN DBASE-II -- Ratliff ) Algol68 1979 Green -- Jean Ichbiah et al., US Department of Defense Simula67 1980 SMALLTALK-80 -- Digitalk Green 1983 Ada -- US Dept of Defense Pascal 1983 Turbo Pascal -- Anders Hejlsberg 1984 Standard ML 1977MUMPS 1985 1984 MUMPS ( dBase 1984 CLIPPER -- Nantucket ) ( dBase 1985 PARADOX -- Borland ) Simula67 1986 Eiffel -- Meyer ( * 1987 HyperCard -- Apple ) ( * 1987 SQL-1 ) 1987 Perl MATLAB 1988 Octave dBase-III 1988 dBaseIV 1988 Tcl [John Ousterhout] Turbo-Pascal 1989 Turbo-Pascal+OOP -- Borland C 1989 Standard C -- ANSI X3.159-1989 (adopted by ISO in 1990) 1990 Haskell 1984MUMPS 1990 1990 MUMPS 1991 Python ( SQL-1 1992 SQL-2 ) Turbo-Pascal OOP 1992 Borland Pascal 1993 Ruby Pascal Modula-II 1994 OBERON -- Wirth Ada 83 1995 Ada 95 -- ISO Borland Pascal 1995 Delphi(1) -- Borland C++ Internet OOP 1995 Java -- Sun Microsystems 1990MUMPS 1995 1995 MUMPS DELPHI(5) 2001 KYLIX -- Borland
Things with unknown or questionable dates:
C+OOP 198? C++ -- Bjarne Stroustrup C++ 1998 ISO Standard C++ * 197? sh (Bourne Shell) -- Bourne sh 19?? ksh (Korn Shell) -- Dave Korn ksh 199? zsh (Z Shell)
Legend:
OLD <> NEW Predecessor(s) etc YEAR PRODUCT -- developer, Company ( Item ) non 'universal programming language' * <YEAR> newly developed