The 20th Century

1936 Alan Turing

Today, Alan Turing is famous for his work on cracking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code machine in 1939. But
in 1936, Turing published a paper regarded as the founding piece on computer science. Turing came up with
the concept of a universal machine. A machine that could follow instructions. He eventually turned this
groundbreaking idea into a plan for a computer powered by electricity that could run programs.

1940s Konrad Zuse

Konrad Zuse created what is considered the first programming language for computers in the early 1940s. It
was called Plankalkul, and it could store codes, enabling engineers to carry out routine, repetitive tasks far
more efficiently and quickly.

1949 Assembly Language and Shortcode

The next big development was Assembly language, a computer programming language that simplified the
instructions to make a computer function. Also, in 1949 came Shortcode, used by

William Schmitt with the BINAC and UNIVAC computers.

1952 Autocode

In 1952 Autocode was developed for the Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester. It was the first
language that could be translated into machine code.

1957 Fortran

John Backus created FORmula TRANslation or FORTRAN back in 1957. Incredibly, this programming
language from the 1950s is still used today in supercomputers and scientific and mathematical computations.

1958 ALGOL and LISP

An algorithmic language created by American and European scientists, ALGOL became the point of origin
for world-renowned programming languages such as Pascal, Java, C, and C++.

In the same year, John McCarthy invented the List processor or LISP. Intended for AI, companies like
Boeing and Genworks are still using it.

1959 COBOL

COBOL was developed by a team led by Dr. Grace Murray Hopper; COBOL stands for Common Business
Oriented Language. It was designed for credit card transaction processors, traffic signals, and phone calls,
and today is used in banking and gaming. Today’s virtual PBX system and other modern solutions to
communication rest on the shoulders of programming languages like COBOL.

1964 BASIC

Students developed BASIC at Dartmouth College. It stands for Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction
Code. BASIC was then further developed and marketed as a product by Bill Gates.

1970 PASCAL

Niklaus Wirth developed this programming language and named it after Blaise Pascal, the French
mathematician. So easy to learn, it was used by Apple early on in its history.

1972 Smalltalk, C, and SQL

Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, and Dan Ingalls developed Smalltalk at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre. It
was designed to modify code. Its principles are present in today’s Java, Python, and Ruby and are used by
companies like CrowdStrike and Logitech.

C was also developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. It was designed to be
used with the Unix operating system. Based on its forerunner B, languages like C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl,
PHP, and Python are all derived from C.

In what could be called a vintage year for coding and programming languages, Raymond Boyce and Donald
Chamberlain developed SQL (Structured Query Language) the same year. It was first called SEQUEL, and
it was used for viewing and altering information in databases.

These three languages represent a significant leap forward in programming, which has impacted some of the
largest tech companies in existence today. Our whole way of using the digital world, from social media to
how a business’s lead referral program functions, owes a debt to these developments.

1980s ADA

Named after Ada Lovelace, the computing pioneer, ADA was designed by Jean Ichbiah’s team at CUU
Honeywell Bull. Ada is a high-level programming language, extended from other popular programming
languages such as Pascal. ADA is used for air-traffic control in various European countries and space
programs.

1983 C++, Objective C

Bjarne Stroustrup modified the C language at Bell Labs. The result was C++, which had some
augmentations such as classes, templates, and virtual functions. C++ is now used in MS Office, Adobe
Photoshop, and various types of high-performance software.
Brad Cox and Tom Love then developed Objective-C, the programming language used for Apple’s
operating systems.

1987 Perl

Larry Wall developed PERL as a general-purpose, high-level language. He designed it for text editing, but
today its primary use is in database applications, data processing, graphic programming, and system
administration.

1990 Haskell

Named after the American mathematician Haskell Brooks Curry. Haskell is a primarily mathematical
programming language. Used in various industries that need to make complicated calculations, crunch
numbers, and keep records.

1991 Python and Visual Basic

The iconic British comedy act Monty Python inspired Python’s name. Guido Van Rossum developed this
general-purpose, high-level language. Today Python is one of the most popular programming languages
worldwide. Giants like Google and Spotify use it.

Visual Basic allows a user to drag and drop sections of code via a user interface (GUI). Parts of Visual Basic
are used in applications like Word and Excel.

1993 Ruby

Yukihiro Matsumoto created Ruby as a high-level programming language. Used for web applications
development, today it’s used by Groupon.

1995 Java, JavaScript, PHP

Created by James Gosling in 1995, Java is one of the world’s most famous and popular programming
languages. It’s a general-purpose, high-level language used in cell phones and parking machines.

JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich. Used for web development, PDF documents, and desktop widgets,
it’s on almost every major website. Some famous examples are Adobe, Gmail, and Mozilla Firefox.

PHP was known as ‘Personal Home Page’ but now stands for ‘Hypertext Preprocessor.’ It was developed by
Rasmus Lerdorf. It’s used for building and maintaining web pages and server-side development. Huge
companies like Facebook, Wikipedia, and WordPress use PHP.
The 21st Century

2000 C#

Microsoft developed C# in an attempt to combine elements of Visual Basic and C. It’s now used in all the
company’s products.

2003 Scala and Groovy

In 2003 Martin Odersky created Scala. Its ability to work with Java gives it an advantage over Android
development. Scala is used by social media and entertainment giants like Twitter, Linkedin, Twitter, and
Netflix.

Groovy is an easy-to-learn language developed by James Strachan and Bob McWhirter. Starbucks,
Craftbase, and Transferwise all use Groovy.

2009 Go (Google)

Large software systems face various challenges, and Google developed Go to resolve them.

Go is popular with big tech companies, such as Uber, Dropbox, and of course, Google. If you need to find
out what is vishing? In part, you can thank Go for finding the answer.

2014 Swift

Apple developed Swift to replace C, C++, and Objective-C. The idea was that Swift would be easier and
more versatile than these languages. Swift can be used for cloud applications, mobile, and desktop.
Language platform Duolingo used it recently to launch a new app. Making apps that customers love using
isn’t easy; these days, many companies use a mobile app flowchart.