History of the development of programming languages
Languages have come a long way. From the days when assembly and machine code were the only means of interacting with computers (which were not yet portable), to an era when Swift and other modern programming languages provide developers with high-level abstractions and efficient tools.
The history of languages is a chronicle of the search for optimal ways to express logic and solve problems.
Machine code and assembler
At first, only machine code was available to people. It looked appropriate – a combinatorial set in the binary number system. PCs also understand only machine code, but modern languages have their own compilers and interpreters, which in their own way translate abstract (human) code into machine language.
In its early days, programming was closely related to the hardware characteristics of computers, and programs were written in assembly languages, interacting directly with the hardware. Assembly language is already a choice towards ease of programming and speed (although from a modern point of view it is doubtful), a direct consequence of ordinary machine code.
Even though assembly language is far from the most common language today, it is used in cases where precise control over a hardware device is required. For example, in order to save computing power. In any case, assembly is one of the most difficult languages.
There are even memes about him.
This was not enough for comfortable programming. A significant need arose for a language “for the people.” More precisely, for scientific specialists who could actively conduct research.
The first high-level languages “for the people”
After the invention of transistors and the first affordable computers, IBM developed Fotran (its alternative to Algol Cobol and others). Programmers were able to abstract away from low-level details and focus on developing readable and structured code. It was the first so-called high-level language. By the way, extremely commercially successful.
There was already a need for specialists, there was a need to quickly increase the skills of programmers in the field of computers.
Programming truly became widespread with the advent of the BASIC language in 1964. Dartmouth College professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz developed it to teach students the basics of programming.
One of the important features of Basic is its wide availability. Many home computers, such as the Commodore 64, Apple II, and IBM PC, provided built-in Basic environments. This allowed ordinary people to start programming right away without having to install or configure additional tools.
The same ABC, which we talked about in a little more detail in our other material, created in the late 1970s at the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam, was just trying to replace the outdated Basic. ABC also aimed to simplify programming and emphasized code readability. It included some innovative ideas such as automatic memory allocation and the use of strong typing.
Smalltalk, developed at the Xerox PARC research center in the late 1960s, pioneered object-oriented programming (OOP), adding a new approach to the programming world. Everything in Smalltalk is represented as objects.
But the period of such languages quickly gave way to the 70s. The time when already well-known modern languages began to appear: C++, C, Pascal.
Towards modern times (70s – our time)
The appearance of the first language in the C family is C itself. The programming language was developed at Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie in 1972. It was created in the context of the development of the Unix operating system, and it quickly gained popularity due to its simplicity, efficiency, and low-level programming capabilities.
The C language gave programmers direct access to computer hardware resources, making it especially useful for systems programming. Additionally, its portability allowed the code to be used across multiple platforms, making it a key tool in operating system and application development.
Don’t forget about the subsequent C++ with its famous OOP.
On the other hand comes Pascal, created by Niklaus Wirth in 1970 with the goal of providing a language that would facilitate learning to program and the development of reliable and structured programs. Pascal introduced many innovations such as block program structure, strong typing, and the use of procedures and functions.
It was intended to encourage good programming practices and was widely used in educational institutions to teach the basics of algorithms and data structures. Pascal also influenced the development of other programming languages, including Ada and Delphi.
Scheme, being a dialect of the Lisp programming language, is distinguished by its simplicity and clean design. Developed at MIT in 1975, Scheme is a minimalist language focusing on functional programming and lambda calculus. Its features include dynamic typing, closures, and garbage collection.
By the way, about garbage collection. Our beloved Python also appears. But about its creation history – read in another material.
Ultimately, markup languages like HTML, web development like JavaScript, and the popular Java appear, providing independence from the machine where the program runs. By the way, this is why Java is top 1 in mobile development.
In fact, an interesting situation is happening in the 2020s. We are waiting for the creation of full-fledged quantum computers, which will require their own assemblers. Extremely high-level languages have already appeared for processing huge amounts of data, such as R and Matlab. And among the 20 languages used you can find the very young Swift from Apple. However, more about all this in other materials…
The past decades have brought with them a wave of innovation in the world of programming languages. The assembler code was literally about the deepest level of programming and working with hardware. Basic, unfinished ABC – “folk” languages that helped learn to write code. And, of course, Smalltalk is the first language built around OOP. Or “C”, created in 1972, is a “bridge” between low-level and high-level languages, providing efficiency and flexibility.
From functional languages such as Lisp to object-oriented ones embodied in Java and C++, this is the history of programming languages. Each stage in development provided programmers with new tools to solve complex problems.
Today there are many languages and they all serve better for certain projects. Therefore, the choice of language often depends not on personal preferences, but rather on the need to develop a specific product.
