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Today, there is an immense computational power existing all around us and responsible for initiating all forms of products such as websites, which became a fundamental way to present things and sell commodities, and neural networks, which is the basic reason why processes like face recognition exist.
We did reach a point where things that seemed superficial and impossible to synthesize or make in the past are now so easy to create that they can be embedded in a complex system that is a part of another even more complex system.
Every computational product that you can observe today is just a result of a group of, in a way, connected languages. I am not talking about the 840 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea - no, not at all. I am talking about programming languages.
History of Programming Languages
Early programming languages were highly specialized. They served the purpose of solving mathematical problems and relied on mathematical notation with baffling syntax. Later, people realized how powerful these languages could be, which resulted in the technologies present in the world you and I are living in right now.
The first programming computer codes were specially designed for their applications. For instance, Alonzo Chirch, an American mathematician and logician, was able to present the lambda calculus in a formulaic way.
With that said, we can divide the evolution timeline of programming languages across history into several intervals.
The Beginning
In 1883, the first programming language was established. A woman named Ada Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage on his very early mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine. Lovelace was able to write an algorithm for the Analytical Engine that was one of its kind.
While Babbage was just concerned in computing numbers, Ada saw these numbers as a thing that would represent something much more. Due to her contributions, she is often referred to as the “first programmer”.
The 1940s
In the 1940s, the first modern electrically powered computers were created. Limited speed and capacity was a problem that forced programmers to write in assembly language, which, in response, required a great deal of intellectual effort to work with.
Assembly language is a low-level programming language that simplifies the machine code language, which is the instructions that the computer receives to execute a specific function, using an assembler.
As a response to making programming process more efficient, between 1943 and 1945, Konrad Zuse developed Plankalkül, a high-level programming language that allows you to write programs that are less independent of a particular type of computer for his Z1 computer; however, the language was not implemented at the time.
Throughout the 1950s, the first high-level programming language ever developed for an electronic computer was introduced by John Mauchly. Short Code was able to represent mathematical expressions more understandably throughout its statements.
Yet, it needed to be translated into machine code every time it is run, which made the process much slower than running the machine code itself.
Autocode was introduced in 1952 by Alick Glennie for the Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester. It was considered the first compiled programming language, meaning it can be translated directly into machine code via a program called a compiler.
In 1954, FORTRAN (Formula Translation) was invented by John Backus and a team led by him at IBM. It was the first widely used high-level programming language to have a functional implementation related to scientific, mathematical, and statistical work.
It was faced with major skepticism due to bugs and delays in development. However, it became popular for its efficiency in a hardware market that is always evolving. It is one of the oldest computer programming languages that are still used today.
The invention of programming languages continued. FLOW-MATIC was developed, which led to the development of COBOL that is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for organizations and companies.
It is used in ATMs, credit card processing, telephone systems, hospital and government computers, automotive systems, and traffic signals.
Another milestone in the late 1950s was hit when ALGOL (Algorithmic Language) was developed. Algol 60 featured three key language innovations: nested block structure, lexical scoping (information hiding), and Backus-Naur form, which is a mathematically exact notation used to describe the syntax of a language.
Algol 60 was influential in the design process of later languages. For instance, Algol 68 extended the key ideas of Algol 60: syntax and semantics became more orthogonal with a recursive typing system that had higher-order functions, and the full language syntax was defined more formally in terms of Van Wijngaarden grammar, which was a formalism designed specifically for that purpose.
Algol 68 gained a reputation for being difficult. That was because some of its language features were occasionally used and its automatic type of coercions, which made it unpopular with implementers.
The 1960s and 1970s
The period from the late 1960s to the late 1970s had seen a cascade of many languages that are either being used explicitly or contributed to developing other popular languages used today.
Some of these languages are C, which is considered by many to be the first high-level language, PASCAL, and SQL(Structured Query Language). SQL was developed by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce at IBM.
It is used for altering and viewing the information stored in databases. SQL uses command statements called queries to add, remove, or view data.
Fast-forwarding 10 years later, the period of the 1980s saw a breakthrough in what is called imperative languages - which rather than inventing new paradigms, it relied on the ideas of the previous decade. Languages such as MATLAB, C++, Ada, and PEARL were introduced in this era.
The 1990s
Throughout the 1990s, some powerful languages were introduced and are used on a very broad scale today. It was another major historic event and that was due to the rapid growth of the internet. Python was introduced in the early 1990s. It is used widely in data analysis and machine learning fields.
It requires lesser lines of code than many languages. Also, Javascript increased in popularity due to its early integration with the Netscape Navigator web browser. Languages such as R, Java, and PHP were introduced in this era as well.
The 2000s
Throughout the 2000s, languages such as Go, Swift, C#, Scala, and Groovy were introduced. Each language had its functionalities and usage fields. For instance, in 2014, Swift was developed by Apple as a replacement for C, C++, and Objective-C.
Swift is supposed to be easier when it comes to usage purposes and allows lower probabilities for mistakes. It is versatile and can be used on different platforms - desktop, mobile apps, and cloud services.
But Why?
All programming languages, either old or new ones, are just invented to serve and assist us, humans, in easing many processes in various fields. Business institutions and companies use specific language/s to make sure everything is going on a plan.
Mobile apps are developed to meet user demands. And artificial intelligence uses programming languages to derive complex computational systems that can minimally mimic the brain and carry out a complex set of functions.
- Written by Eyad Aoun (EMN Community Member From Egypt)
- Edited by Mridul Goyal (EMN Community Member From New Delhi, India)
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