Programming Languages Works

What is Programming Language

A programming language is used to provide a vehicle through which a computer and its users can communicate.

Some languages allow the programmer to manipulate the machine's hardwired instructions set directly. These are called low-level languages. Other high-level languages are far removed from the hardware and must be translated by compilers to low-level instructions. Because it is easy to use, most of softwares are written in high-level languages. Below are the top popular programming languages of computing revolution. 

FORTRAN

FORTRAN (FORmula TRANSlator) was developed by IBM Corporation in the mid-1950s to be used for scientific and engineering applications that require complex mathematical computations. It's still used and its latest versions are object oriented.

 

ALGOL

FORTRAN's modular approach was also a basis for a concept called clock structuring that allowes modularity within a program. Block structuring coupled with recursion led to the development of a new language called ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language) in 1958.

COBOL

COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was developed in the late 1950s by computer manufactures, the U.S. government and industrial computer based in a language developed by Grace Hopper, a career U.S. Navy officer and computer scientist. COBOL is still widely used for commercial applications that require precise and efficient manipulation of large amounts of data. Its latest version supports object-oriented programming.

PASCAL

Research in the 1960s resulted in structured programming, a disciplined approach to writing programs that are clearer, easier to test and debug and easier to modify than large program produced with previous techniques. One of the most tangible results of this research was the development of PASCAL by Nicklaus Wirth in 1971. It was designed for teaching structured programming and was popular in college courses for several decades.

ADA

Ada, based on Pascal programming language, was developed under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) during the 1970s and early 1980s. the DOD wanted a single language that would fill most of its needs. The Pascal-based language was named after Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron. She's credited with writing of the world's first computer program in the early 1800s (for the Analytical Engine mechanical computing device designed by Charles Babbage). Its latest version supports object-oriented programming.

BASIC

BASIC was developed in the 1960s at Dartmouth College to introduce novices to programming. Many of its latest versions are object oriented.

C

C language was implemented in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories. It initially became widely known as the UNIX operating system's development language. Today, most of the code for general-purpose operating system is written in C or C++.

C++

C++ language, an extension of C language, was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in the early 1980s at Bell Laboratories. C++ provides a number of features that "spruce up" the C language, but more important, it provides capabilities for object oriented programming.

Objective-C

Objective-C is an object oriented language based on C. it was developed In the early 1980s and later acquired by Next, which in turn was acquired by Apple. It has became the key programming language for the Mac OS X operating system and all iOS-powered devices (such as iPods, iPhones  and iPads).

Visual Basic

Microsoft's Visual Basic language was introduced in the early 1990s to simplify the development of Microsoft Windows applications. Its latest versions supports object-oriented programming.

Visual C#

Microsoft's three primary object-oriented programming languages are Visual Basic, Visual C++ (based on C++) and C# (based on C++, Java and developed for integrating the internet and the web into computer applications).

PHP

PHP is an object-oriented, "open-source scripting" language supported by a community of users and developers and is used by numerous websites including Wikipedia and Facebook. PHP is platform independent –implementation exists for all major UNIX, Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems. PHP also supports many databases, including MySQL.

Python

Python, another object-oriented scripting language, was released publicly in 1991. Developed by Guido van Rossum of the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam (CWI). Python is "extensible", it can be extended  through classes and programming interfaces.

JavaScript

JavaScript is the mostly used scripting language. It's primarily used to add programmability to web pages. For example, animations and interactivity with the user. It's provided with all major web browsers.

Ruby on Rails

Ruby created in the mid 1990s Yukihiro Matsumoto is an open source, object-oriented programming language with a simple syntax that's similar to Python. Ruby on Rail combines the scripting language Ruby with the Rail web application framework developed by 37Signals. Their book, Getting real (gettingreal,37signals,com/toc.php) is a must read book for web developers. Many Ruby on Rails developers have reported productivity gains over other languages when developing database-intensive web applications. Ruby on Rails was used to build Twitter's user interface.

Scala

Scala short for "scalable language" was designed bu Martin Odersky, a professor at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (FPFL in Switzeerland. Released in 2003, Scala users both the object-oriented and functional programming paradigms and is designed to integrate with Java. Programming is Scala can reduce the amount of code in your applications significantly. Twitter and Foursquare use Scala.