High-level language created for commercial applications which require precise and efficient manipulation of large amounts of data.
More than half of all business software is still programmed in COBOL, more lines exist in COBOL than in any other programming language in the world.
BCPL
an interpretive language, which influenced the design of B.
B
Thompson
BCPL
C
designed by Thompson when he started to implement a Fortan compiler for the first UNIX, but was developed by Ritchie into C, as it had the interpretive drawbacks of BCPL, on which it was based.
C
Ritchie
pre-1973
B
C++
Developed by Ritchie from B. Generated machine code, declared data types, defined data structures. Was used to rewrite UNIX in 1973.
Pascal
after Blaise Pascal, seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher
Professor Nilaus Wirth
1971
High-level language created for academic purposes to help teach the use of structured programming (as many software schedules of the 1960s ran over time, over budget and were unreliable).
Ada
after Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, assistant to Charles Babbage and possible the world's first computer programmer, on Babbage's Analytical Engine
United States Department of Defense (sic)
1970s-1980s
High-level language sponsored by USA DoF to provide cohesion for production of command-and-control software systems (which had been written in hundreds of separate programming languages before). While based on Pascal the final language is very different, able to multi-task (unlike Pascal).
based on Pascal
BML
B? Markup Language
1990s?
Server-side markup language and templating engine.
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