17 questions · Technology
Computers really only understand zeros and ones. To let people tell them what to do anyway, there are programming languages, hundreds of them. The first to catch on widely was Fortran, introduced at IBM in 1957 so that scientists no longer had to translate formulas into machine code by hand. Soon after came COBOL for banks and insurers and Lisp for early research into artificial intelligence. Many languages carry surprising stories in their names. C is called C because it followed a language called B, and the “++” in C++ is a programmer’s joke. Pascal honours a French mathematician, Python a British comedy troupe, Java a variety of coffee and Kotlin an island near Saint Petersburg. JavaScript was written in about ten days in 1995 and now runs in every browser; PHP once modestly stood for “Personal Home Page”. Mascots are part of the story too: Go has a gopher, Rust a crab called Ferris. In the 1980s BASIC got a whole generation programming on home computers, SQL still queries almost every database, and Swift builds apps for iPhone and Mac. Who invented which language, and what is it used for? Test yourself here.
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Python
Van Rossum started it over the Christmas holidays of 1989 and was a big fan of Monty Python.
💡 Did you know? Today it is the leading language for data analysis and artificial intelligence.
Java
Programs run in a virtual machine and therefore on any system that supports it.
💡 Did you know? It is named after a type of coffee, hence the steaming cup in its logo.
JavaScript
The name was meant to cash in on the hype around another language; technically the two have little in common.
💡 Did you know? Today it runs in practically every web browser, including behind this app.
C
The name follows a predecessor language called B.
💡 Did you know? The first example program in Kernighan and Ritchie’s textbook printed “hello, world”.
C++
The “++” is a programmer’s joke: it means “increase by one”.
💡 Did you know? Many big video games and web browsers are written in it.
COBOL
It was designed to read almost like English; computer scientist Grace Hopper shaped it decisively.
💡 Did you know? Experts in it are in demand today because many of the original developers have retired.
Fortran
The name stands for “Formula Translation”; John Backus led its development.
💡 Did you know? Weather and climate models on supercomputers still use it today.
Lisp
The name comes from “list processing”.
💡 Did you know? McCarthy also coined the term “artificial intelligence”.
Pascal
Its namesake built one of the first calculating machines in the 17th century.
💡 Did you know? Generations of pupils and students learned to program with it.
BASIC
The name is an acronym for “Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code”.
💡 Did you know? Microsoft’s first product, in 1975, was an interpreter for it on the Altair 8800.
Swift
It has been open source since 2015.
💡 Did you know? Its logo is a stylised swift, the bird.
Rust
The crab is called Ferris, and its programmers call themselves “Rustaceans”.
💡 Did you know? Since 2022 parts of the Linux kernel may be written in it.
Go
Its creators include Ken Thompson, co-creator of Unix.
💡 Did you know? Docker and Kubernetes, two pillars of modern cloud computing, are written in it.
PHP
Today the abbreviation recursively stands for “Hypertext Preprocessor”.
💡 Did you know? WordPress, which powers a large share of all websites, is written in it.
Ruby
Matsumoto wanted a language that makes programmers happy.
💡 Did you know? The name is a nod to Perl: ruby and pearl are both birthstones.
SQL
A typical command starts with SELECT, FROM and WHERE.
💡 Did you know? Whether to say “S-Q-L” or “sequel” is still debated among experts.
Kotlin
It runs on the same virtual machine as Java and can be mixed with Java code.
💡 Did you know? The name is a nod to Java, which is also an island.
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