Evolution of Programming Languages

Programming
Year Information
Language
Zuses’sPlankalkül 1936 - Konrad Zuse (1910- -was never implemented and
1945 95) was published 15yrs after its
development.

-first “high-level” language

Minimal late 1940s John Mauchly Short Code(1949)

Hardware to early -deveoped for the BINAC
Programming: 1950s computer but was later
Pseudo codes transferred to a UNIVAC I
computer

John Backus SpeedCoding(1954)

-effectively converted the IBM
701 to a virtual three-address
floating point calculator

Grace Hopper UNIVAC “Compiling System”

(1951-1953) - “compiling”
system that expanded
pseudocode into machine
code subprograms
The IBM 704 and 1954 – John Backus - IBM 704
FORTRAN 1957 (1937 - 2007) indexing and floating point in
hardware

- first widely accepted high-

level language: FORmula
TRANslating
System

- supervised by John Backus

Turing Award 1977.
Functional 1958 John McCarthy - Language for symbolic
Programming: computation (AI)
LISP
- Lists without cluttering of
deallocation statements

- First functional programming

language

- John McCarthy MIT (visiting

IBM Research)
Turing Award 1971.
Evolution of Programming Languages

The First Step 1959-1962 ACM (Association for -results of efforts to design a
Toward Computing universal language
Sophistication: Machinery)
Algol 60 And GAMM (a - The mother of all high-level
German acronym for languages
Society for Applied
Mathematics and - International joint effort for
Mechanics) universal language

- Idea: use programs in

publications to explain
algorithms
- Algorithmic Language

- Block-structure

- Two different
parameter passing techniques

- Recursive procedures
Computerizing 1959 CODASYL -COmmon Business Oriented
Business Language
Records: COBOL
-first language that allow
names to be truly connotative

-hierarchical data structures

were first implemented
The Beginnings 1960 John Kemeny and -Beginner’s All-purpose
of Timesharing: Thomas Kurtz Sumbolic Instruction Code
BASIC
-first widely used language that
was used through terminals
connected o a remote
computer
Everything for 1960 Advanced Language -initially called NPL or New
Everybody: PL/I Development Programming Language
Committee
-includes the best parts of
ALGOL60(recursion and block
structure), Fortran IV(separate
compilation with
communication through global
data), and COBOL 60(data
structures, I/O, and report-
generating facilities
Evolution of Programming Languages

Two Early 1960 Kenneth E. Iverson APL (A Programming

Dynamic Language) – contains large
Languages: APL number of powerful operators
and SNOBOL D.J. Farber, R.E. making it difficult to read
Griswold, E.P.
Polensky SNOBOL – collection of
powerful operations for string
pattern matching
The Beginnings 1962-1964 Kristen Nygaard - First language with data
of Data (1926-2002) abstraction
Abstraction:
Simula Ole-Johan Dahl - Introduced the concept of a
(1931-2002) “class”

- By Kristen Nygaard and Ole-

Johan Dahl from Norway,
Turing-Award 2001.
Orthogonal 1962 ACM (Association for -includes a significant number
Design: ALGOL Computing of features that had not been
68 Machinery) previously used
And GAMM (a
German acronym for -its use of orthogonality was
Society for Applied revolutionary
Mathematics and
Mechanics) - uses an elegant and concise
but also unknown meta
language

Some Early 1971 Niklaus Wirth Pascal

Descendants of – a “better Algol 68”
the ALGOLs - call-by-value parameter
passing, records
- Designed for teaching
(1978-95 most common)
- No variable length array
passing
- No modules or APIs
- No input/output standard

1972 Dennis Ritchie C

-has adequate control
statements and data-
structuring facilities
-has rich set of operators
Evolution of Programming Languages

Larry Wall Perl

-its scalar type stores both
strings and numbers which are
normally stores in double-
precision floating-point form

Programming 1972 Alain Colmerauer, -it primary component is

based on Logic: Phillippe Roussel, method for specifying
Prolog Robert Kowalski predicate calculus propositions
and an implementation of a
restricted form of resolution
History’s Largest 1975 Ada Byron (1815-52) - Triggered by the DoD
Design Effort: -1980 (Countess of
Ada Lovelace) - The world’s largest design
the world’s first effort
programmer (for
Charles - One language for everybody
Babbage’s machine)
- Problem: too many features
(first compiler only after 5
years in 1985).
Combining 1980 Bjarne Stroustrup -provides two constructs that
Imperative and define types, classes, and
Object-Oriented structs
Features: C++
-includes exception handling
that is significantly different
from that of Ada

C# 2002 Anders Hejlsberg - pronounce “C sharp”

- “better” version of C++ and

Java

- part of .NET framework

- designed by Anders
Hejlsberg
known from Turbo Pascal &
Delphi

- is more typesafe than C++,

e.g.
contains delegates, a safe
form of
function pointers