Timeline of programming languages

This is a timeline of historically important programming languages.

1 Legend
2 Pre 1950
3 1950 onward
- 3.1 1950s
- 3.2 1960s
- 3.3 1970s
- 3.4 1980s
- 3.5 1990s
- 3.6 2000s
4 See also
5 External links

Legend

( Entry ) means a non-universal programming language

* <YEAR> means a unique language (no direct predecessor)

Predecessor(s) Year Name Chief developer, Company

Pre 1950

* ~1837 Analytical Engine order code Charles Babbageand Ada Lovelace* 1943-5 Plankalkül(concept) Konrad Zuse* 1943-6 ENIAC coding system John von Neumann, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, Herman Goldstineafter Alan TuringENIAC coding system 1946 ENIAC Short Code Richard Clippinger, John von Neumannafter Alan TuringENIAC coding system 1946 Von Neumann and Goldstine graphing system (Notation) John von Neumannand Herman GoldstineENIAC coding system 1947 ARC Assembly Kathleen Booth Analytical Engine order code 1948 CPC Coding scheme Howard AikenENIAC coding system 1948 Curry notation system Haskell CurryENIAC Short Code 1949 Brief Code John Mauchlyand William F. Schmitt ENIAC Short Code 1949 C-10 Betty HolbertonCPC Coding scheme 1949 Seeber coding scheme (concept) Robert Seeber

1950 onward

1950s

Brief Code 1950 Short CodeWilliam F Schmidt, A.B. Tonik, J.R. Logan ARC 1950 Birkbeck Assembler Kathleen Booth Plankalkül 1951 Superplan Heinz Rutishauser * 1951 ALGAE Edward A Voorhees and Karl Balke Short Code 1951 Intermediate Programming Language Arthur BurksEDSAC 1951 Regional Assembly Language Maurice WilkesAiken CPC system 1951 Boehm unnamed coding system Corrado BoehmPlankalkül 1951 Klammerausdrücke Konrad ZuseShort Code 1951 OMNIBAC Symbolic Assembler Charles Katz * 1951 Stanislaus (Notation) Fritz BauerEDSAC 1951 Whirlwind assembler Charles Adams and Jack Gilmore at MIT Project WhirlwindEDSAC 1951 Rochester assembler Nat Rochester * 1951 Sort Merge Generator Betty HolbertonC-10 and Short Code 1952 A-0 Grace HopperAiken CPC 1952 Autocode Alick Glennieafter Alan TuringSORT/MERGE 1952 Editing Generator Milly Koss * 1952 COMPOOL RAND/SDC * 1953 SpeedcodingJohn Backus * 1953 READ/PRINT Don Harroff, James Fishman, George Ryckman * 1954 Laning and Zierler systemLaning, Zierler, Adams at MIT Project WhirlwindGlennie Autocode 1954 Mark I AutocodeTony Brooker Speedcoding 1954-1955 FORTRAN "0"(concept) Team led by John W. Backusat IBMA-0 1954 ARITH-MATICTeam led by Grace Hopperat UNIVAC A-0 1954 MATH-MATICTeam led by Grace Hopperat UNIVAC * 1954 MATRIX MATH H G Kahrimanian * 1954 IPL I(concept) Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, Herbert SimonA-0 1955 FLOW-MATICTeam led by Grace Hopperat UNIVAC 1955 BACAIC M. Grems and R. Porter FORTRAN, A-2 1955 PACT I SHAREBoehm 1955-6 Sequentielle Formelübersetzung Fritz Bauerand Karl Samelson Laning and Zerler 1955-6 IT Team led by Alan Perlis1955 PRINT IBM IPL I 1958 IPL II(implementation) Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, Herbert SimonIPL 1956-1958 LISP(concept) John McCarthyFLOW-MATIC 1957 COMTRAN Bob BemerFORTRAN 0 1957 FORTRAN "I"(implementation) John W. Backusat IBMMATH-MATIC 1957-1958 UNICODE Remington Rand UNIVAC * 1957 COMIT(concept) FORTRAN I 1958 FORTRAN IITeam led by John W. Backusat IBMFORTRAN, IT and Sequentielle Formelübersetzung 1958 ALGOL 58(IAL) ACM/GAMM IPL II 1958 IPL V Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, Herbert SimonFLOW-MATIC, COMTRAN 1959 COBOL(concept) The CodasylCommittee ALGOL 58 1959 JOVIALJules Schwartz at SDCIPL 1959 LISP(implementation) John McCarthy1959 TRAC(concept) Mooers

1960s

ALGOL 58 1960 ALGOL 60FLOW-MATIC, COMTRAN 1960 COBOL 61(implementation) The CodasylCommittee * 1961 COMIT(implementation) FORTRAN II 1962 FORTRAN IV* 1962 APL(concept) IversonALGOL 58 1962 MADArden, et al. ALGOL 60 1962 SIMULA(concept) FORTRAN II, COMIT 1962 SNOBOL Griswold, et al. ALGOL 60 1963 CPLBarron, Strachey, et al. SNOBOL 1963 SNOBOL3 Griswold, et al. ALGOL 60 1963 ALGOL 68(concept) van Wijngaarden, et al. ALGOL 58 1963 JOSS ICliff Shaw, RANDMIDAS 1964 MIMICH. E. Petersen, et al. CPL, LISP 1964 COWSEL Burstall, PopplestoneALGOL 60, COBOL, FORTRAN 1964 PL/I(concept) IBMFORTRAN II, JOSS 1964 BASIC Kemenyand KurtzFARGO 1964 IBM RPG IBM1964 Mark-IV Informatics1964 TRAC(implementation) Mooers1964? IITRANJOSS 1965 TELCOMP BBNJOSS I 1966 JOSS IIChuck Baker, RANDFORTRAN IV 1966 FORTRAN 66LISP 1966 ISWIM (Concept)LandinALGOL 60 1966 CORAL66CPL 1967 BCPL RichardsFORTRAN, TELCOMP 1967 MUMPS Massachusetts General Hospital* 1967 APL(implementation) IversonALGOL 60 1967 SIMULA 67(implementation) Dahl, Myhrhaug, Nygaardat Norsk RegnesentralSNOBOL3 1967 SNOBOL4 Griswold, et al. PL/I 1967 XPLW. M. Mckeeman, et al. at University Of California Santa Cruz, California
J. J. Horning, et al. at Stanford UniversityDIBOL 1968 DIBOL-8 DECCOWSEL 1968 POP-1 Burstall, Popplestone1968 FORTH(concept) MooreLISP 1968 LOGO PapertCRT RPS 1968 MAPPER Unisys* 1968 REFAL(implementation) Valentin TurchinALGOL 60 1968 ALGOL W Niklaus Wirth, C. A. R. HoareALGOL 60 1969 ALGOL 68(implementation) van Wijngaarden, et al. ALGOL 60, COBOL, FORTRAN 1969 PL/I(implementation) IBMBCPL 1969 B Ken Thompson, with contributions from Dennis Ritchie1969 PPLThomas A. Standish at Harvard University1969 TUTOR University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

1970s

1970? FORTH(implementation) MoorePOP-1 1970 POP-2ALGOL 60, ALGOL W 1971 Pascal Wirth, Jensen Pascal, XPL 1971 Sue Holtet al. at University of TorontoSIMULA 67 1972 Smalltalk-72 Xerox PARCPL/I, ALGOL, XPL 1972 PL/M Kildallat Digital ResearchB, BCPL, ALGOL 68 1972 C Ritchie* 1972 INTERCAL2-level W-Grammar 1972 Prolog ColmerauerPascal, BASIC 1973 COMALChristensen, Løfstedt 1973 ML Robin MilnerPascal, Sue 1973 LIS Ichbiahet al. at CII Honeywell BullBASIC 1974 GRASS DeFantiBusiness BASIC 1974 BASIC FOUR BASIC FOUR CORPORATION LISP 1975 Scheme Sussman, SteeleBASIC 1975 Altair BASIC Gates, AllenALGOL 68, BLISS, ECL, HAL 1975 CS-4 Brosgol at IntermetricsPascal 1975 Modula WirthSmalltalk-72 1976 Smalltalk-76 Xerox PARCSpeakeasy-2 1976 Speakeasy-3 Stanley Cohen,Stephen Pieper at Argonne National LaboratoryC, FORTRAN 1976 Ratfor KernighanAPL, PPL, Scheme 1976 S John Chambersat Bell Laboratories* 1977 FP John Backus* 1977 Bourne Shell(sh) BourneFortran 1977 IDLDavid Stern of Research Systems Inc MUMPS 1977 Standard MUMPSSNOBOL 1977 Icon(concept) GriswoldALGOL 68, LIS 1977 Green Ichbiahet al. at CII Honeywell Bullfor US Dept of DefenseALGOL 68, CS-4 1977 Red Brosgol et al. at Intermetricsfor US Dept of DefenseALGOL 68, 1977 Blue Goodenoughet al. at SofTech for US Dept of DefenseALGOL 68, 1977 Yellow Spitzen et al. at SRI Internationalfor US Dept of DefenseFORTRAN IV 1978 FORTRAN 77* 1978? MATLAB Molerat the University of New MexicoAlgol60 1978? SMALL Brownlee at the University of AucklandIngres 1978 SQLaka structured query language IBM* 1978 VISICALC Bricklin, Frankstonmarketed by VisiCorpModula 1979 Modula-2 WirthPL/I, BASIC, EXEC 2 1979 REXX CowlishawC, SNOBOL 1979 AWK Aho, Weinberger, KernighanSNOBOL 1979 Icon(implementation) Griswold* 1979 Vulcan dBase-II Ratliff

1980s

C, SIMULA 67 1980 C with classes StroustrupSmalltalk-76 1980 Smalltalk-80 Xerox PARCBASIC, Compiler Systems, Digital Research 1980-1981 CBASIC/CB80/CB86 Gordon EubanksSmalltalk, C 1982 Objective-C Brad CoxGreen 1983 Ada 83 CII Honeywell BullC with Classes 1983 C++StroustrupBASIC 1983 True BASIC Kemeny, Kurtzat Dartmouth College COBOL1983? ABAP SAPsh 1984? Korn Shell(ksh) David Korn Forth, Lisp1984 RPL Hewlett-PackardML 1984 Standard MLdBase 1984 CLIPPER NantucketLISP 1984 Common Lisp Guy Steeleand many others 1977MUMPS 1985 1984 MUMPSPascal 1985 Object Pascal Apple ComputerdBase 1985 PARADOX Borland InterPress1985 PostScript WarnockBASIC 1985 QuickBASIC Microsoft1986 Miranda David Turnerat University of Kent1986 LabVIEW National InstrumentsSIMULA 67 1986 Eiffel Meyer1986 Informix-4GL InformixC 1986 PROMALINFORM 1986 CorVisionCortex Smalltalk 1987 Self(concept) Sun Microsystems Inc.* 1987 HyperTalk Apple* 1987 SQL-87C, sed, awk, sh 1987 Perl WallModula-2 1987 Oberon Wirth MATLAB1988 OctavedBase-III 1988 dBase-IVAwk, Lisp 1988 Tcl OusterhoutREXX 1988 Object REXXSimon C. Nash Ada 1988 SPARKBernard A. Carré APL 1988 A+Arthur Whitney* 1987 Mathematica Wolfram ResearchTurbo Pascal, Object Pascal 1989 Turbo Pascal OOP Hejlsbergat BorlandC 1989 Standard C89/90 ANSIX3.159-1989 (adopted by ISO in 1990) Modula-2 1989 Modula-3Cardeli, et al. DECand Olivetti

1990s

Oberon 1990 Object OberonH Mössenböck, J Templ, R Griesemer APL, FP 1990 J Iverson, R. Huiat Iverson Software Miranda 1990 Haskell1984 MUMPS 1990 1990 MUMPSSML 84 1990 SML 90 Milner, Tofte and HarperFortran 77 1991 Fortran 90Object Oberon 1991 Oberon-2Hanspeter Mössenböck, WirthABC 1991 Python Van RossumProlog 1991 OzGert Smolka and his students 1991 QQuickBASIC 1991 Visual Basic Alan Cooper, sold to MicrosoftSQL-87 1992 SQL-92Turbo Pascal OOP 1992 Borland Pascalksh 1993? Z Shell(zsh) Smalltalk 1993? Self(implementation) Sun Microsystems Inc.Forth 1993 FALSE Wouter van Oortmerssen* 1993 WinDevPC Soft HyperTalk 1993 Revolution TranscriptHyperTalk 1993 AppleScript AppleAPL, Lisp 1993 K Arthur WhitneySmalltalk, Perl 1993 Ruby Yukihiro MatsumotoLua 1993 Lua Roberto Ierusalimschyet al. at Tecgraf, PUC-Rio C 1993 ZPLChamberlain et al. at University of WashingtonSelf, Dylan 1993 NewtonScriptWalter Smith Common Lisp 1994 ANSI Common LispLisp 1994 Dylanmany people at Apple ComputerPerl 1994 PHP Rasmus LerdorfForth 1994 ANS Forth Elizabeth Rather, et al Ada 83 1995 Ada 95 ISOBorland Pascal 1995 Borland Delphi Anders Hejlsbergat Borland1995 ColdFusion AllaireC, SIMULA67 OR C++, Smalltalk, Ada 83, Objective-C 1995 Java James Goslingat Sun Microsystems1990MUMPS 1995 1995 MUMPSSelf, Java 1995 LiveScript Brendan Eichat NetscapeLisp, C++, Tcl/Tk, TeX, HTML 1996 CurlDavid Kranz, Steve Ward, Chris Terman at MITLiveScript 1996 JavaScript Brendan Eichat NetscapeFortran 90 1996 Fortran 95APL, Perl 1996 Perl Data Language(PDL) Karl Glazebrook, Jarle Brinchmann, Tuomas Lukka, and Christian Soeller S 1996 R Robert Gentlemanand Ross Ihaka REXX 1996 NetRexx Cowlishaw1996 LassoBlue World Communication ksh 1996 /usr/bin/shPOSIX standard version of Korn shell Oberon-2 1997 Component PascalOberon microsystems, Inc Joule, Original-E 1997 E Mark S. MillerSML 90 1997 SML 97 Milner, Tofte, Harperand MacQueen PHP 1997 PHP3 PHP team Scheme 1997 PicoFree University of BrusselsSmalltalk-80, Self 1997 Squeak Smalltalk Alan Kay, et al. at Apple ComputerJavaScript 1997 ECMAScript ECMATC39-TG1 Smalltalk, APL, Objective-C 1997 F-ScriptPhilippe Mougin C++, Standard C 1998 Standard C++ANSI/ISO Standard C++ Prolog 1998 ErlangOpen Source Erlang at EricssonAWK, Perl, Unix shell 1998 PiktRobert Osterlund (then at University of Chicago) JAVA, SQL 1998 DASL(BOS) Bob Goldberg and Ludovic Champenois at Sun MicrosystemsStandard C89/90 1999 Standard C99 ISO/IEC9899:1999 Web 2.0 IDE & ALM 1999 WebDevPC Soft DSSSL1999 XSLT W3C Game Maker1999 Game Maker Language(GML) Mark OvermarsJAVA, HTML 1999 DASL(AUS) Bob Goldberg, Bruce Daniels, Peter Yared, Yury Kamen, and Syed Ali at Sun Microsystems

2000s

Java 2000 Join JavaG Stewart von Itzstein FP, Forth 2000 Joy von ThunC, C++, C#, Java 2000 D Walter Brightat Digital Mars Ada, C++, Lisp 2000 XLChristophe de Dinechin C, C++, Java, Delphi 2000 C#Anders Hejlsbergat Microsoft(ECMA) C, C++, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scheme 2000 FeriteChris Ross Java 2001 AspectJ Xerox PARCSelf, NewtonScript 2002 IoSteve Dekorte Perl, C++ 2003 S2 Fitzpatrick, AtkinsC#, ML, MetaHaskell 2003 NemerleUniversity of WrocławJoy, Forth, Lisp 2003 FactorSlava Pestov Smalltalk, Java, Haskell, Standard ML, OCaml 2003 Scala Martin OderskyC, C++ 2004 eC (Ecere C) Jérôme Jacovella-St-Louis, Ecere CorporationFortran 95 2004 Fortran 2003Mobile Development 2004 WinDev Mobile PC Soft * 2004 SubtextJonathan Edwards Python, C# 2004 BooRodrigo B. de Oliveira Object Pascal, C# 2004 Chrome programming language RemObjects SoftwareJava 2004 Groovy James Strachan* 2005 Seed7 Thomas Mertes Haskell 2006 Links Phil Wadler, University of Edinburgh* 2006 KiteMooneer Salem C#, ksh, Perl, CL, DCL, SQL 2006 Windows PowerShell MicrosoftC# 2006-07 Cω Microsoft ResearchAda 95 2007 Ada 2005 ISOAPEX 2007 APEX Salesforce.comC# 2007 Vala GNOMEC, R 2008 PCASTL Philippe Choquette