History of Programming  Languages

Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani on Unsplash

The History of Programming Languages

Programming languages have been around for many decades, with the first language, Plankalkül, created in the mid 1940s. Over the last 80 years, programming languages have come a long way -  modern languages like Java, HTML, and Python have much more versatility, functionality, and popularity than their earlier counterparts. How these programming languages came to be is a fascinating story, so let’s take a look at the origins of some popular languages.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a language that programs functional and complex web pages. HTML is used to display buttons, images, text, and so much more on a site. Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, created the World Wide Web and its programming language HTML in 1989. He was motivated to create a way for physicists around the world to research collaboratively; a specific function he wanted was the ability to cross-reference research papers. For example, when he read one paper, he wanted to easily access other papers that shared similar features. HTML, with its hypertext abilities, was the perfect language for this function. Hypertext is the linking of text to other text in the form of hyperlinks, buttons, or keyboard keys. Besides hypertexting, HTML has a markup feature using tags. When creating a web page, a programmer will use tags to distinguish and format certain features of the page, like which element is a button and which one is a picture. HTML has evolved from a simple language of a few tags to a language that can create a complex website. It has undergone 5 major version changes over the years, including changes to the number of tags, new features like tables and math formulas, and improvements to human and computer readability.

Python

Python is a high-level, easily-readable, object-oriented, and versatile programming language created in 1991 by Guido van Rossum. van Rossum created the language as a hobby during the holiday season, and wanted the language to appeal to Unix and C programmers. Python is a very minimalistic language with simple keywords and formatting. Unlike most other languages, Python requires indentations for formatting rather than semi-colons or curly brackets and its code doesn’t need to be written within a class. The language is used in scientific computing and machine learning and adds functionality to web applications. Despite Python being created almost 30 years ago, it only has 3 major version changes. An important change was garbage-collection - the ability to reuse memory taken up by old, no-longer-used objects.  

Java

Java is an object-oriented programming language with class requirements. This means that all code, like data and methods, must be written in classes. In 1995, the Green Team, a group of engineers at Sun Microsystems led by “The Father of Java” James Gosling, developed Java as a successor to the company’s previous ABC programming language. At the time, Java was developed for interactive television; however, it proved to be too complex for the digital cable television of that time. Java was found to suit internet programming better, and made its way into  mobile phones, games, and data analysis, among other technology. Although Java was advanced for its time, without significant changes it would not have become an integral part of today’s technology. Java has had around 14 version updates, with more coming soon. As Java has evolved, it has accumulated many built-in classes, expanded its list of reserved keywords to 51, and acquired abilities like reading and writing images. These additions to Java make the language more flexible to a programmer’s needs. For instance, the addition of the Math class allowed programmers to easily perform exponential calculations, keywords like if and else made it possible for a certain action to only occur if a condition was true or false, and image writing lets programmers create their own images with code. 

Modern programming has been around for almost 80 years, but without advancement, today’s technology would not have been possible. Over many years, programming languages have gained adaptability and practicality, and as programming continues to evolve, we can only imagine what coders will dream up in the future.

If you are interested in learning how to program in any of these languages, head over to Codefy’s enrollment website and register for our fall sessions.