The 10 most influential programming languages of the last 50 years and their creators
There are many programming languages in the IT universe. Every year there are more and more of them. For example, the languages Scala, Kotlin, Go, and Closure have recently appeared. But history tells us that only a few of them will survive.
The languages discussed here have made a huge contribution to the world of software development. That is why they are among the ten most influential languages of the last fifty years.
Languages are an essential part of the programming industry. They are often discussed, criticized, and they are improved over time. They are well-known to everyone, but not everyone knows their history, at least the name of their creators. This is less common in popular languages. For example, everyone knows that James Gosling is the father of Java. But not every programmer knows who created Perl, Pascal, Lisp or Erlang.
The author of the article, the translation of which we publish today, says that the situation described above prompted him to write it. Here we will talk about the most popular and successful programming languages and their creators.
I present to you the story of ten programming languages and their creators. The languages here are in random order, with the exception of the first in the list, the Java language. I am a Java developer, so I decided to do just that.
I know that many C-programmers will disagree with me and consider that the first language in the list should be C. They can be understood, because C is the oldest of the languages that are still widely used. But this article is not a certain rating of languages. This is material that is designed to remind all its readers of the masters of computer art who have changed the world of programming languages and software development.
James gosling
Java is one of the most popular and successful programming languages. Java was created by Dr. James Arthur Gosling. He is known as the "father of Java."
Initially, Sun Microsystems was involved in the development and support of Java. Since January 2010, after Sun acquired Oracle, Oracle has been doing this.
Java is based on the WORA principle (“Write Once Run Anywhere,” “Written once, works everywhere.”). Platform independence of Java has become one of the fundamental reasons for the success of this language in a corporate environment.
Java is currently one of the most popular languages. If you want to learn Java, take a look at this tutorial.
Dennis Ritchie
Dennis Macalaird Ritchie, an American computer specialist, was involved in the creation of the C programming language in 1967-1973 at AT&T Bell Labs.
The C language is still quite popular. It is widely used in system programming. It is older than Java, but does not give up its position.
Dennis Ritchie, by the way, also created the world famous Unix operating system. He did this with his longtime colleague Ken Thompson.
If you compare the popularity of Dennis Ritchie with the popularity of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, it turns out that there is almost nothing to compare here. But few can compare with him in what contribution he made to the world of information technology. Every programmer should know about this. If you want to learn C, take a look at this specialization on Coursera.
Björn Straustrup
Björn Straustrup was born on December 30, 1950 in the city of Aarhus, Denmark. It is known for creating and developing the widely used C ++ programming language.
C ++, as you can tell by the name of the language, is a new generation language that follows the C language. C ++ is distinguished by its support for object-oriented programming capabilities. It looked incredibly interesting when compared with C ++.
C ++ is still one of the most popular languages. For example, it is widely used in the development of high-frequency trading systems due to the fact that the code written in C ++ is pretty close to the system capabilities of computers, and because this language supports object-oriented features that are popular in our time .
If you want to learn C ++ from scratch, I recommend taking a look at this tutorial. It combines theory and practice well.
Guido van Rossum
The Python language was developed by Guido van Rossum of the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI). Python is a general-purpose high-level language. When designing it, special attention was paid to good code readability. Its syntax is considered pure and expressive.
In the US, Python has almost replaced Java in the scientific community. In particular, this translates into the fact that modern students begin to learn programming from learning Python, rather than C or Java, as it was before.
Python is widely used in various fields, in particular, in web development and in the field of information security. This language is used by companies such as Google, Yahoo and Spotify. Here is a good Python tutorial.
Brendan Eich
If you asked me what programming language can be called the most popular in the last 5-10 years, then I would say that this is JavaScript. It definitely dominates the world of client-side web development, not least because of the existing JavaScript libraries. In addition, it is very popular in the server environment - thanks to the Node.js. platform.
JavaScript is a scripting language that uses prototype inheritance mechanisms. It is a dynamic, weakly typed language that supports working with higher-order functions. JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich, who worked during the development of this language at Netscape Communications Corporation.
JavaScript code can be executed in browsers; everything that sets in motion modern web interfaces is written in JavaScript. JavaScript is used on almost every serious site.
If you want to learn JavaScript - at your service a huge amount of material .
Rasmus Lerdorf
The PHP language (originally called Personal Home Page Tools, which translates as “Tools for Creating Personal Web Pages") was created in 1995 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Regardless of how much you hate this language, you cannot escape the fact that it is quite popular in the development of server parts of modern web projects.
The PHP reference implementation is currently being developed by The PHP Group. PHP competed with Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) and Java Server Pages (JSP) technologies and as a result became much more demanded than them. It is an open source language used by Internet giants such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Wordpress and Joomla.
If you want to learn PHP, take a look here .
Larry wall
Perl is a high-level, dynamic, interpreted general-purpose programming language. It was created by Larry Wall in the mid-1980s. Perl owes its popularity to its remarkable word processing capabilities.
Perl is still the main language used to develop scripts on UNIX systems. Perl is used in the field of computer graphics, in database applications, in the field of network programming. Among the companies that use this language are IMDB, Amazon, and Priceline. Here is a good Perl tutorial.
Yukihiro Matsumoto
The Ruby language was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto in the mid-1990s in Japan. Ruby programming is fun. If you tried the Ruby on Rails web framework, then you will understand me.
Languages such as Perl, Ada, Lisp, Smalltalk have had an impact on Ruby. This language was created with the expectation that writing programs on it could be quick and pleasant.
Ruby is mainly used in web application development. In particular, this language is used by companies such as Twitter, Hulu and Groupon.
Here is a Ruby tutorial.
John McCarthy
The Lisp language (LISt Processing language) was developed by John McCarthy. It is one of the oldest high-level languages that are still used today.
I have never studied Lisp, but they say that this language is the progenitor of functional programming languages such as Haskell, Erlang and Scala. This language is used in various fields. In particular, in the military. There are not many training courses for Lisp. Here is one of them.
Nicklaus Wirth
Pascal is an imperative procedural language developed in the late 1960s by Nicklaus Wirth. This language has had a significant impact on the IT industry. It was created as a compact and efficient language aimed at maintaining a good programming style by using a structural approach to development. As with Lisp, there are not many training courses for Pascal. Yet the language is quite old. But if you want to study it, take a look here .
I shared with you my story about 10 programming languages and their creators. Everything I talked about made a serious contribution to the development of the IT industry. Without them, the modern world would be completely different.
Dear readers! If you made a list of the most influential programming languages like this, which languages would you include in it?
The languages discussed here have made a huge contribution to the world of software development. That is why they are among the ten most influential languages of the last fifty years.
Languages are an essential part of the programming industry. They are often discussed, criticized, and they are improved over time. They are well-known to everyone, but not everyone knows their history, at least the name of their creators. This is less common in popular languages. For example, everyone knows that James Gosling is the father of Java. But not every programmer knows who created Perl, Pascal, Lisp or Erlang.
The author of the article, the translation of which we publish today, says that the situation described above prompted him to write it. Here we will talk about the most popular and successful programming languages and their creators.
Top 10 programming languages and their creators
I present to you the story of ten programming languages and their creators. The languages here are in random order, with the exception of the first in the list, the Java language. I am a Java developer, so I decided to do just that.
I know that many C-programmers will disagree with me and consider that the first language in the list should be C. They can be understood, because C is the oldest of the languages that are still widely used. But this article is not a certain rating of languages. This is material that is designed to remind all its readers of the masters of computer art who have changed the world of programming languages and software development.
1. Java - James Gosling
James gosling
Java is one of the most popular and successful programming languages. Java was created by Dr. James Arthur Gosling. He is known as the "father of Java."
Initially, Sun Microsystems was involved in the development and support of Java. Since January 2010, after Sun acquired Oracle, Oracle has been doing this.
Java is based on the WORA principle (“Write Once Run Anywhere,” “Written once, works everywhere.”). Platform independence of Java has become one of the fundamental reasons for the success of this language in a corporate environment.
Java is currently one of the most popular languages. If you want to learn Java, take a look at this tutorial.
2. C - Dennis Ritchie
Dennis Ritchie
Dennis Macalaird Ritchie, an American computer specialist, was involved in the creation of the C programming language in 1967-1973 at AT&T Bell Labs.
The C language is still quite popular. It is widely used in system programming. It is older than Java, but does not give up its position.
Dennis Ritchie, by the way, also created the world famous Unix operating system. He did this with his longtime colleague Ken Thompson.
If you compare the popularity of Dennis Ritchie with the popularity of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, it turns out that there is almost nothing to compare here. But few can compare with him in what contribution he made to the world of information technology. Every programmer should know about this. If you want to learn C, take a look at this specialization on Coursera.
3. C ++ - Björn Stroustrup
Björn Straustrup
Björn Straustrup was born on December 30, 1950 in the city of Aarhus, Denmark. It is known for creating and developing the widely used C ++ programming language.
C ++, as you can tell by the name of the language, is a new generation language that follows the C language. C ++ is distinguished by its support for object-oriented programming capabilities. It looked incredibly interesting when compared with C ++.
C ++ is still one of the most popular languages. For example, it is widely used in the development of high-frequency trading systems due to the fact that the code written in C ++ is pretty close to the system capabilities of computers, and because this language supports object-oriented features that are popular in our time .
If you want to learn C ++ from scratch, I recommend taking a look at this tutorial. It combines theory and practice well.
4. Python - Guido van Rossum
Guido van Rossum
The Python language was developed by Guido van Rossum of the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI). Python is a general-purpose high-level language. When designing it, special attention was paid to good code readability. Its syntax is considered pure and expressive.
In the US, Python has almost replaced Java in the scientific community. In particular, this translates into the fact that modern students begin to learn programming from learning Python, rather than C or Java, as it was before.
Python is widely used in various fields, in particular, in web development and in the field of information security. This language is used by companies such as Google, Yahoo and Spotify. Here is a good Python tutorial.
5. JavaScript - Brendan Eich
Brendan Eich
If you asked me what programming language can be called the most popular in the last 5-10 years, then I would say that this is JavaScript. It definitely dominates the world of client-side web development, not least because of the existing JavaScript libraries. In addition, it is very popular in the server environment - thanks to the Node.js. platform.
JavaScript is a scripting language that uses prototype inheritance mechanisms. It is a dynamic, weakly typed language that supports working with higher-order functions. JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich, who worked during the development of this language at Netscape Communications Corporation.
JavaScript code can be executed in browsers; everything that sets in motion modern web interfaces is written in JavaScript. JavaScript is used on almost every serious site.
If you want to learn JavaScript - at your service a huge amount of material .
6. PHP - Rasmus Lerdorf
Rasmus Lerdorf
The PHP language (originally called Personal Home Page Tools, which translates as “Tools for Creating Personal Web Pages") was created in 1995 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Regardless of how much you hate this language, you cannot escape the fact that it is quite popular in the development of server parts of modern web projects.
The PHP reference implementation is currently being developed by The PHP Group. PHP competed with Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) and Java Server Pages (JSP) technologies and as a result became much more demanded than them. It is an open source language used by Internet giants such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Wordpress and Joomla.
If you want to learn PHP, take a look here .
7. Perl - Larry Wall
Larry wall
Perl is a high-level, dynamic, interpreted general-purpose programming language. It was created by Larry Wall in the mid-1980s. Perl owes its popularity to its remarkable word processing capabilities.
Perl is still the main language used to develop scripts on UNIX systems. Perl is used in the field of computer graphics, in database applications, in the field of network programming. Among the companies that use this language are IMDB, Amazon, and Priceline. Here is a good Perl tutorial.
8. Ruby - Yukihiro Matsumoto
Yukihiro Matsumoto
The Ruby language was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto in the mid-1990s in Japan. Ruby programming is fun. If you tried the Ruby on Rails web framework, then you will understand me.
Languages such as Perl, Ada, Lisp, Smalltalk have had an impact on Ruby. This language was created with the expectation that writing programs on it could be quick and pleasant.
Ruby is mainly used in web application development. In particular, this language is used by companies such as Twitter, Hulu and Groupon.
Here is a Ruby tutorial.
9. Lisp - John McCarthy
John McCarthy
The Lisp language (LISt Processing language) was developed by John McCarthy. It is one of the oldest high-level languages that are still used today.
I have never studied Lisp, but they say that this language is the progenitor of functional programming languages such as Haskell, Erlang and Scala. This language is used in various fields. In particular, in the military. There are not many training courses for Lisp. Here is one of them.
10. Pascal - Nicklaus Wirth
Nicklaus Wirth
Pascal is an imperative procedural language developed in the late 1960s by Nicklaus Wirth. This language has had a significant impact on the IT industry. It was created as a compact and efficient language aimed at maintaining a good programming style by using a structural approach to development. As with Lisp, there are not many training courses for Pascal. Yet the language is quite old. But if you want to study it, take a look here .
Summary
I shared with you my story about 10 programming languages and their creators. Everything I talked about made a serious contribution to the development of the IT industry. Without them, the modern world would be completely different.
Dear readers! If you made a list of the most influential programming languages like this, which languages would you include in it?
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