This is a record of notable programming languages, by decade.
1790s Year Name Developer Predecessor(s) 1790 Jacquard loom (concept) Joseph Marie Jacquard
1800s Year Name Developer Predecessor(s) 1801 Jacquard machine (implementation) Joseph Marie Jacquard
1830s Year Name Developer Predecessor(s) 1837 BAB L1 Charles Babbage Jacquard
1840s Year Name Developer Predecessor(s) 1843 Note G(ed.: erratum/corrigendum: "1848") Ada Lovelace
1870s Year Name Developer Predecessor(s) 1879 Begriffsschrift Gottlob Frege
1940s Year Name Chief developer, company Predecessor(s) 1943–45/46 Plankalkül Konrad Zuse 1943–46 ENIAC coding system John von Neumann, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, and Herman Goldstine after Alan Turing 1946 ENIAC Short Code Richard Clippinger and John von Neumann after Alan Turing 1947–52 ARC/Birkbeck Assembler Kathleen Booth ENIAC Short Code 1948 Plankalkül (year of publication) Konrad Zuse 1949 EDSAC Initial Orders David Wheeler ENIAC coding system Short Code (originally knownas Brief Code) John Mauchly and William F. Schmitt ENIAC Short Code Year Name Chief developer, company Predecessor(s)
1950s Year Name Chief developer, company Predecessor(s) 1950 Short Code (for UNIVAC I) William F. Schmitt Short Code 1951 Superplan Heinz Rutishauser Plankalkül ALGAE Edward A. Voorhees, Karl Balke Intermediate Programming Language Arthur Burks Short Code Boehm unnamed coding system Corrado Böhm CPC Coding scheme Klammerausdrücke Konrad Zuse Plankalkül Stanislaus (Notation) Fritz Bauer Sort Merge Generator Betty Holberton 1952 Short Code (for UNIVAC II) Albert B. Tonik,UNIVAC conference, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. 171-page transcript of oral history with computer pioneers, including Albert B. Tonik, involved with the Univac computer, held on 17–18 May 1990. J. R. Logan Short Code (for UNIVAC I) A-0 Grace Hopper Short Code Glennie Autocode Alick Glennie CPC Coding scheme Operator programming Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov with the participation Kateryna Yushchenko MESM Editing Generator Milly Koss SORT/MERGE COMPOOL RAND/SDC 1953 Speedcoding John W. Backus READ/PRINT Don Harroff, James Fishman, George Ryckman 1954 Laning and Zierler system J. Halcombe Laning, Niel Zierler, Adams at MIT Project Whirlwind Mark I Autocode Tony Brooker Glennie Autocode ARITH-MATIC Team led by Grace Hopper at UNIVACA-0 MATH-MATIC Team led by Charles Katz MATRIX MATH H G Kahrimanian IPL I (concept) Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, Herbert A. Simon 1954–55 FORTRAN (concept) Team led by John W. Backus at IBM Speedcoding1955 Address programming language Kateryna Yushchenko Operator programming FLOW-MATIC Team led by Grace Hopper at UNIVAC A-0 BACAIC M. Grems, R. Porter PACT I SHARE FORTRAN, A-2 Freiburger Code University of Freiburg PRINT IBM1955–56 Sequentielle Formelübersetzung Fritz Bauer, Karl Samelson Boehm IT Team led by Alan Perlis Laning and Zierler 1956–58 LISP (concept) John McCarthy IPL1957 COMTRAN Bob Bemer FLOW-MATIC GEORGE Charles Leonard Hamblin FORTRAN I (implementation) John W. Backus at IBM FORTRAN COMIT (concept) Victor Yngve 1957–58 UNICODE Remington Rand UNIVAC MATH-MATIC1958 FORTRAN II Team led by John W. Backus at IBM FORTRAN I ALGOL 58 (IAL) ACM/GAMM FORTRAN, IT, Sequentielle Formelübersetzung IPL II (implementation) Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, Herbert A. Simon IPL I IPL V Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, Herbert A. Simon IPL II1959 APT Douglas T. Ross FACT Fletcher R. Jones, Roy Nutt, Robert L. Patrick COBOL (concept) The CODASYL Committee FLOW-MATIC, COMTRAN, FACT JOVIAL Jules Schwartz at SDC ALGOL 58 LISP (implementation) Steve Russell IPL MAD – Michigan Algorithm Decoder Bruce Arden, Bernard Galler, Robert M. Graham ALGOL 58 TRAC (concept) Calvin Mooers Year Name Chief developer, company Predecessor(s)
1960s Year Name Chief developer, company Predecessor(s) 1960 ALGOL 60 ALGOL 58 1960 COBOL 61 (implementation) The CODASYL Committee FLOW-MATIC, COMTRAN 1960 SAKO Leon Łukaszewicz, et al., Polish Academy of Sciences 1961 COMIT (implementation) Victor Yngve 1961 GPSS Geoffrey Gordon, IBM 1962 FORTRAN IV IBM FORTRAN II 1962 APL (concept) Kenneth E. Iverson 1962 Simula (concept) Ole-Johan Dahl (mostly) ALGOL 60 1962 SNOBOL Ralph Griswold, et al. FORTRAN II, COMIT 1963 Combined Programming Language (CPL) (concept) Barron, Christopher Strachey, et al. ALGOL 60 1963 SNOBOL3 Griswold, et al. SNOBOL 1963 ALGOL 68 (concept) Adriaan van Wijngaarden, et al. ALGOL 60 1963 JOSS I Cliff Shaw, RAND ALGOL 58 1964 MIMIC H. E. Petersen, et al. MIDAS 1964 COWSEL Rod Burstall, Robin Popplestone CPL, LISP 1964 PL/I (concept) IBM ALGOL 60, COBOL, FORTRAN 1964 Basic Assembly Language IBM Assembly language 1964 BASIC John George Kemeny, Thomas Eugene Kurtz at Dartmouth College FORTRAN II, JOSS 1964 IBM RPG IBM FARGO 1964 Mark-IV Informatics 1964 Speakeasy-2 Stanley Cohen at Argonne National Laboratory Speakeasy 1964 TRAC (implementation) Calvin Mooers 1964 P′′ Corrado Böhm 1964? IITRAN 1965 RPG II IBM FARGO, RPG 1965 MAD/I (concept) University of Michigan MAD, ALGOL 60, PL/I 1965 TELCOMP BBN JOSS 1965 Atlas Autocode Tony Brooker, Derrick Morris at Manchester University ALGOL 60, Autocode 1965 PL360 (concept) Niklaus Wirth ALGOL 60, ESPOL 1966 JOSS II Chuck Baker, RAND JOSS I 1966 ALGOL W Niklaus Wirth, C. A. R. Hoare ALGOL 60 1966 FORTRAN 66 John Backus and his team FORTRAN IV 1966 ISWIM (concept) Peter J. Landin LISP 1966 CORAL 66 I. F. Currie, M. Griffiths ALGOL 60 1966 APL (implementation) Kenneth E. Iverson 1967 BCPL Martin Richards CPL 1967 MUMPS Massachusetts General Hospital FORTRAN, TELCOMP 1967 Simula 67 (implementation) Ole-Johan Dahl, Bjørn Myhrhaug, Kristen Nygaard at Norsk Regnesentral ALGOL 60 1967 Interlisp D.G. Bobrow and D.L. Murphy Lisp 1967 EXAPT Herwart Opitz, Wilhelm Simon, Günter Spur, and Gottfried Stute at RWTH Aachen University and TU Berlin APT 1967 SNOBOL4 Ralph Griswold, et al. SNOBOL3 1967 XPL William M. McKeeman, et al. at University of California, Santa CruzJ. J. Horning, et al. at Stanford University PL/I 1968 ALGOL 68 (UNESCO/IFIP standard) Adriaan van Wijngaarden, Barry J. Mailloux, John E. L. Peck and Cornelis H. A. Koster, et al. ALGOL 60 1968 COBOL 1968 American National Standard COBOL (X3.23-1968) COBOL 1968 POP-1 Rod Burstall, Robin Popplestone COWSEL 1968 DIBOL-8 DEC DIBOL 1968 Forth (concept) Moore 1968 Logo Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, Cynthia Solomon LISP 1968 MAPPER Unisys CRT RPS 1968 REFAL (implementation) Valentin Turchin 1968 TTM (implementation) Steven Caine and E. Kent Gordon, California Institute of Technology GAP, GPM 1968 PILOT John Amsden Starkweather, University of California, San Francisco Computest 1968 PL360 (implementation) Niklaus Wirth ALGOL 60, ESPOL 1968 PL/S (as Basic Systems Language) IBM Assembly language 1969 PL/I (implementation) IBM ALGOL 60, COBOL, FORTRAN 1969 B Ken Thompson, with contributions from Dennis Ritchie BCPL, Fortran 1969 Polymorphic Programming Language (PPL) Thomas A. Standish at Harvard University 1969 SETL Jack Schwartz at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences ALGOL 60 1969 TUTOR Paul Tenczar & University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign 1969 Edinburgh IMP Edinburgh University ALGOL 60, Autocode, Atlas Autocode Year Name Chief developer, company Predecessor(s)
1970s Year Name Chief developer, company Predecessor(s) 1970 Forth (implementation) Charles H. Moore 1970 POP-2 Robin Popplestone POP-1 1970 SAIL Dan Swinehart, Bob Sproull ALGOL 60 1970 Pascal Niklaus Wirth, Kathleen Jensen ALGOL 60, ALGOL W 1970 BLISS Wulf, Russell, Habermann at Carnegie Mellon University ALGOL 1971 KRL Daniel G. Bobrow at Xerox PARC, Terry Winograd at Stanford University KM, FRL (MIT) 1971 Compiler Description Language (CDL) Cornelis H.A. Koster at University of Nijmegen 1972 Smalltalk-72 Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, Dan Ingalls, Xerox PARC Simula 67 1972 PL/M Gary Kildall at Digital Research PL/I, ALGOL, XPL 1972 C Dennis Ritchie B, BCPL, ALGOL 68 1972 INTERCAL Don Woods, James M. Lyon 1972 Prolog Alain Colmerauer 2-level W-Grammar 1972 Structured Query language (SQL) IBM ALPHA, Quel (Ingres) 1972 SASL David Turner at University of St Andrews ISWIM 1973 COMAL Børge Christensen, Benedict Løfstedt Pascal, BASIC 1973 ML Robin Milner 1973 LIS Jean Ichbiah et al. at CII Honeywell Bull Pascal, Sue 1973 Speakeasy-3 Stanley Cohen, Steven Pieper at Argonne National Laboratory Speakeasy-2 1974 CLU Barbara Liskov ALGOL 60, Lisp, Simula 1974 GRASS Thomas A. DeFanti BASIC 1974 COBOL 1974 ANSI X3.23-1974 COBOL 1968 1974 BASIC FOUR MAI BASIC Four Inc. Business BASIC 1974 PROSE modeling language CDC 6600 Cybernet Services SLANG, FORTRAN 1974 sed Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs ed 1975 ABC Leo Geurts and Lambert Meertens SETL 1975 PROSE modeling language Time-Sharing Version CDC 6400 Cybernet KRONOS Services SLANG, FORTRAN 1975 Scheme Gerald Jay Sussman, Guy L. Steele Jr. LISP 1975 Altair BASIC Bill Gates, Paul Allen BASIC 1975 Modula Niklaus Wirth Pascal 1976 Smalltalk-76 Xerox PARC Smalltalk-72 1976 Mesa Xerox PARC ALGOL 1976 Ratfor Brian Kernighan C, FORTRAN 1976 S John Chambers at Bell Labs APL, PPL, Scheme 1976 SAS SAS Institute 1976 Integer BASIC Steve Wozniak BASIC 1977 FP John Backus 1977 Bourne Shell (sh) Stephen R. Bourne 1977 Commodore BASIC Jack Tramiel BASIC 1977 IDL David Stern of Research Systems Inc Fortran 1977 Standard MUMPS MUMPS 1977 Icon (concept) Ralph Griswold SNOBOL 1977 Euclid Butler Lampson at Xerox PARC, Ric Holt and James Cordy at University of Toronto 1977 Applesoft BASIC Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland BASIC 1978 RAPT Pat Ambler and Robin Popplestone APT 1978 C shell Bill Joy C 1978 RPG III IBM FARGO, RPG, RPG II 1978 HAL/S designed by Intermetrics for NASA XPL 1978 Applesoft II BASIC Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland Applesoft BASIC 1978? MATLAB Cleve Moler at the University of New Mexico Fortran 1978? SMALL Nevil Brownlee at the University of Auckland Algol60 1978 VisiCalc Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston marketed by VisiCorp 1979 TI BASIC (TI 99/4A) Texas Instruments BASIC 1979 Modula-2 Niklaus Wirth Modula, Mesa 1979 REXX Mike Cowlishaw at IBM PL/I, BASIC, EXEC 2 1979 AWK Alfred Aho, Peter J. Weinberger, Brian Kernighan C, SNOBOL 1979 Icon (implementation) Ralph Griswold SNOBOL 1979 Vulcan dBase-II Wayne Ratliff RETRIEVE Year Name Chief developer, company Predecessor(s)
1980s