Timeline of Software and Programming Languages
From the dawn of computing to the modern era: tracing the evolution of software and programming languages and their impact on society, business, and technology.
- Category
- Engineering & Technology
- Tag
- technology
- Events
- 54 events 1945–2020
- Added
1945: Plankalkül (Plan Calculus)
Konrad Zuse completes the design of Plankalkül (Plan Calculus), a programming language intended for engineering calculations and the first high-level programming language ever developed, which was not implemented until much later due to Zuse's lack of resources.
Wikipedia1948: The Mathematical Theory of Communication
Claude Shannon publishes "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," which establishes the foundations of information theory and provides a mathematical framework for understanding communication and data transmission.
Wikipedia1952: Grace Hopper completes A-0
Grace Hopper develops A-0, the first compiler ever written for a programming language. This marks the beginning of a new era in programming, allowing programmers to write code in high-level languages that could be compiled into machine code for execution on a computer.
Wikipedia1952: Assembly Language
The first assembly language is developed by Nathaniel Rochester and his team at IBM, providing a more efficient way of programming computers and laying the groundwork for higher-level programming languages.
Wikipedia1957: FORTRAN Programming Language
John Backus and his team at IBM develop FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation), the first high-level programming language and the first to be widely used for scientific and engineering applications.
Wikipedia1958: LISP Programming Language
John McCarthy develops the first version of LISP, the second-oldest high-level programming language after Fortran, designed for symbolic computing and artificial intelligence research.
Wikipedia1959: COBOL programming language released
COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) is a high-level programming language designed for business applications. COBOL was developed by a committee of computer professionals in 1959 and quickly became widely used in the business world. Although newer programming languages have largely replaced COBOL in many areas, it remains in use today in some legacy systems.
Wikipedia1964: BASIC Programming Language
John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College develop BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a high-level programming language designed to be easy to learn and use, and a key driver of the personal computer revolution.
Wikipedia1969: UNIX Operating System
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs develop the UNIX operating system, which provides a modular and flexible environment for software development and becomes a cornerstone of modern computing.
Wikipedia1970: Pascal Programming Language
Niklaus Wirth develops Pascal, a high-level programming language that emphasizes simplicity and structured programming, and becomes a popular language for teaching programming and writing system software.
Wikipedia1972: C Programming Language
Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs develops C, a high-level programming language that provides low-level access to system resources and becomes one of the most widely used programming languages in the world.
Wikipedia1979: Oracle Database Management System
Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates establish Oracle Corporation and release the first version of Oracle Database, a relational database management system that becomes one of the most widely used enterprise databases in the world.
Wikipedia1979: Initial Release of VisiCalc
Software Arts releases VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet program that runs on personal computers, and becomes the "killer app" that drives the adoption of the Apple II and other early microcomputers for business use.
Wikipedia1983: GNU Project and Free Software Foundation
Richard Stallman launches the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, with the goal of developing free and open-source software and promoting user freedom and software sharing.
Wikipedia1985: Windows Operating System
Microsoft releases Windows 1.0, its first graphical user interface operating system, marking a major shift in personal computing and the beginning of the Windows era.
Wikipedia1989: PostgreSQL Database Management System
Michael Stonebraker and his team release the first version of PostgreSQL, an open-source object-relational database management system, providing advanced features such as multi-version concurrency control and extensibility.
Wikipedia1989: Microsoft Word released
A word processing software program that has become one of the most widely used in the world.
Wikipedia1990: Initial Release of Adobe Photoshop
Adobe releases Photoshop 1.0, a raster graphics editor that revolutionizes the way digital images are created, edited, and manipulated, and becomes the industry standard for graphic design, photography, and digital art.
Wikipedia1991: Linux Operating System
Linus Torvalds releases the first version of Linux, an open-source operating system that becomes a popular choice for servers and embedded systems, and a major force in the development of open-source software.
Wikipedia1991: Python Programming Language
Guido van Rossum releases the first version of Python, an interpreted, high-level programming language designed for general-purpose programming, emphasizing code readability and simplicity.
Wikipedia1994: Netscape Navigator released
One of the first and most popular web browsers that helped popularize the World Wide Web.
Wikipedia1995: Java Programming Language
Sun Microsystems releases Java, a high-level programming language that allows for platform-independent code, and becomes a popular language for web development, enterprise software, and mobile devices.
Wikipedia1995: PHP Programming Language
Rasmus Lerdorf releases PHP (Personal Home Page Tools), a scripting language designed for web development that becomes widely used for server-side scripting, creating dynamic web pages, and web application development.
Wikipedia1995: JavaScript Programming Language
Brendan Eich develops JavaScript, a scripting language designed to add interactivity and dynamic content to web pages, and becomes one of the most widely used programming languages in the world.
Wikipedia1995: Ruby Programming Language
Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto releases the first version of Ruby, an interpreted, high-level programming language designed for productivity and fun, emphasizing code readability and expressiveness.
Wikipedia1995: MySQL Database Management System
Michael Widenius releases the first version of MySQL, an open-source relational database management system that becomes popular for web-based applications and is later acquired by Sun Microsystems and then by Oracle Corporation.
Wikipedia1996: CSS Style Sheet Language
Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos develop Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a style sheet language that allows for separating presentation from content in web pages, and becomes a key component in modern web design.
Wikipedia1998: Google Search Engine
Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch Google, a search engine that revolutionizes web search with its PageRank algorithm and becomes a dominant force in online search and advertising.
Wikipedia2000: C# Programming Language
Microsoft releases C#, a high-level programming language designed for the .NET framework, and becomes a popular language for Windows development, enterprise software, and web applications.
Wikipedia2001: iTunes released
A media player, library, and internet radio broadcaster that became the dominant music player software on the Macintosh platform.
Wikipedia2001: Microsoft .NET Framework
Microsoft releases the .NET Framework, a software framework for building Windows applications and web services, providing a common platform for programming languages and web services.
Wikipedia2003: WordPress Blogging Platform
Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little create WordPress, a popular blogging platform that becomes a leading content management system, powering millions of websites and blogs around the world.
Wikipedia2004: Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
The Mozilla Foundation releases Firefox, a popular web browser that introduces new features such as tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and extensions, and becomes a strong competitor to Internet Explorer.
Wikipedia2005: Ruby on Rails released
An open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language, that has helped popularize the use of MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture in web development.
Wikipedia2005: Django released
A high-level Python web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
Wikipedia2005: YouTube Video-Sharing Platform
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim create YouTube, a video-sharing platform that allows users to upload, share, and view videos, becoming the most popular video-sharing website in the world.
Wikipedia2006: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon launches Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides scalable compute capacity in the cloud, which later expands to become Amazon Web Services (AWS), a collection of cloud computing services.
Wikipedia2006: Twitter launched
A social media platform that has had a significant impact on the way people communicate and share information online.
Wikipedia2008: Google Chrome Web Browser
Google releases Chrome, a web browser that emphasizes speed, simplicity, and security, and becomes a popular browser worldwide, with a large market share on desktop and mobile devices.
Wikipedia2009: Go Programming Language
Google releases Go, a programming language designed for high performance, scalability, and concurrency, and intended for systems programming, network programming, and web development.
Wikipedia2010: AngularJS JavaScript Framework
Google releases AngularJS, a popular JavaScript framework for building dynamic web applications, providing a powerful toolkit for web developers and enabling the creation of complex web applications with ease.
Wikipedia2010: Rust Programming Language
Mozilla Research releases the first version of Rust, a systems programming language designed for speed and safety, providing memory safety without the need for a garbage collector.
Wikipedia2011: Kotlin programming language released
Kotlin is a statically-typed programming language developed by JetBrains that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and also compiles to JavaScript. Kotlin was designed to improve upon Java and address some of its shortcomings, while maintaining full interoperability with Java code.
Wikipedia2011: Laravel released
A free, open-source PHP web application framework intended for the development of web applications following the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern.
Wikipedia2013: React JavaScript Library
Facebook releases the first version of React, a JavaScript library for building user interfaces that uses a declarative programming model and a virtual DOM for efficient updates and rendering.
Wikipedia2014: Swift Programming Language
Apple releases Swift, a new programming language for iOS and macOS development, providing a modern syntax, safety, and performance improvements over Objective-C, and becoming one of the most popular programming languages for mobile app development.
Wikipedia2015: Solidity released
A contract-oriented, high-level programming language for implementing smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.
Wikipedia2015: Windows 10 Operating System
Microsoft releases Windows 10, a new operating system with a modern design, improved performance, and new features such as Cortana, the Edge web browser, and the ability to run universal apps on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
Wikipedia2016: Launch of Replit
Faris Masad and Amjad Masad launch Replit, a cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) that allows users to code, collaborate, and deploy apps in various programming languages, and becomes a popular tool for teaching, learning, and building software.
Wikipedia2016: Next.js released
A React-based open-source web framework for building server-side rendered and/or static web applications.
Wikipedia2016: Google TensorFlow Machine Learning Library
Google releases TensorFlow, a popular open-source machine learning library that provides tools for building and training machine learning models, enabling a wide range of applications in fields such as computer vision, natural language processing, and robotics.
Wikipedia2017: JavaScript ES8 (ECMAScript 2017) Standard
The ECMAScript 2017 standard, also known as ES8, is released, introducing new features such as async/await, shared memory, and new string methods, providing new capabilities and improvements to the JavaScript language.
Wikipedia2020: TypeScript 4.0 Programming Language
Microsoft releases TypeScript 4.0, a new version of the popular programming language that introduces new features such as labeled tuple elements, variadic tuple types, and speed improvements in incremental builds, providing a safer and more expressive way to write JavaScript code.
Wikipedia2020: Release of GPT-3
OpenAI releases GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3), an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text, and becomes one of the largest and most advanced AI language models available, with the ability to perform a wide range of natural language processing tasks, including language translation, text completion, and question answering.
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