Programming Language - History Of Programming Languages

HISTORY OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

According to Computer Languages, Konrad Zuse created the very first high-level language in 1945. During World War II, Zuse, who had previously constructed several basic, general purpose computers in his parent's apartment, fled Berlin for the Bavarian Alps, where he lived as a refugee. The programming language Zuse created translated from German as "The Plan Calculus." In theory, this computer language could be applied to a variety of different computer problems. Unlike the computers that existed at the time, Zuse's program relied not on decimals, but on binary notation.

Zuse's programming language was never adopted for widespread use on actual computers. FORTRAN and COBOL were the first high-level programming languages to make an impact on the field of computer science. Along with assembly language, these two high-level languages have led to or influenced the development of many modern programming languages, including Java, C++, and BASIC.

FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslating), released in 1957 after a three-year developmental period, is well suited for math, science, and engineering programs because of its ability to perform numeric computations. The language was developed in New York by IBM's John Backus. At the time, IBM was trying to make computer's more user-friendly in an effort to increase sales. FORTRAN achieved this goal, because it was easy to learn in a short period of time and required no previous computer knowledge. It eliminated the need for engineers, scientists, and other users to rely on assembly programmers in order to communicate with computers. Although FORTRAN is often referred to as a language of the past, computer science students were still taught the language in the early 2000s for historical reasons, and because FORTRAN code still exists in some applications.

COBOL (COmputer Business Oriented Language), was released in April of 1959 and has been updated several times since then. Shortly after the introduction of FORTRAN, users from different fields, including academia and manufacturing, convened at the University of Pennsylvania to discuss the need for a standardized business language that could be used on a wide variety of computers. The eventual result was COBOL, a programming language well suited for creating business applications. COBOL's strength is in processing data, and in its simplicity. Because the language is readable and easy to understand, it is difficult to hide malicious or destructive computer code within a COBOL program, and is easy to spot programming errors.

In the early 2000s, COBOL was a frequently discussed topic in e-commerce circles. Many companies sought to allow customers to access data on mainframe computers running COBOL programs. Finding ways to enable COBOL to interface with hypertext markup language (HTML), which is used to create pages on the World Wide Web, became important.