Programming Languages Timeline

In 1995 BYTE magazine published a time line of programming languages from 1946 to 1996. This is over 10 years old, but is still interesting. The article mentions that the first BASIC program ran at 4 AM, I’m sure reminding many hackers of their favorite late night breakthroughs. Language designers seem to have a penchant for acronym contortion. Check out Bell Labs’ StriNg Oriented SymBOlic Language or SNOBOL.

Jason Kottke pointed out Java, Perl, Ruby, etc. were omitted from the list. Java, JavaScript, and Ruby were cutting edge languages at the time of publication. The first public versions of those languages were released in 1995. Perl on the other hand was introduced in 1987. In 1995, the “Camel Book” had already been out for 4 years.

Predicting which technologies will be—and therefore currently are—important is very difficult. Picking which new technologies will catch on is probably more difficult than predicting which ones will become unimportant in the future. The time line refers to the proposal of object-oriented COBOL in 1993 and its expected ratification in 1997. No compiler has been created that conforms to the current object-oriented COBOL standard.

(via kottke.org)