Programming languages have been around since the dawn of computers, but they weren’t always as versatile and user friendly as they are now. From assembly language to high-level languages, there have been several generations of programming language development, each with its own pros and cons. In this blog post, we'll explore the history of programming languages from their origins to the present day. We'll discuss various generations of programming languages, along with their differences and similarities. Finally, we'll touch on what makes a good programming language, to help you make informed choices when selecting a language for your next project.

Pre-history: the origins of programming

• Programming languages have been around since the early 19th century, when Ada Lovelace wrote the first program for the Analytical Engine. However, it wasn't until the 1950s that programming languages began to be used in earnest.
• The first widely used programming language was FORTRAN, developed in 1957. FORTRAN was designed for scientific and engineering applications and was very successful in those fields. However, it was not well suited for other types of applications.
• This led to the development of other programming languages, such as COBOL and Lisp. COBOL was designed for business applications and was much more successful than FORTRAN in that arena. Lisp was developed for artificial intelligence applications and has remained popular in that field to this day.
• The 1960s also saw the development of one of the most influential programming languages of all time: ALGOL. ALGOL influenced many subsequent languages, including Pascal, C, and Java.
• Since the 1960s, there have been hundreds of programming languages developed. Some are very specialized, while others are more general purpose. The history of programming languages is ongoing and continues to be written every day!

First programming languages

• Starting in the late 1940s, there was a considerable effort to develop electronic computers. One of the earliest was the ENIAC machine, which was designed and built during World War II to help with ballistic calculations. Other early machines included the Harvard Mark I, Z3, and EDSAC computers.
• The first programming languages were created for these machines. The first, called Plankalkül, was developed by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1948. It was followed by Regnecentralen's RC 4000 in 1950 and Short Code in 1951. In 1953, FORTRAN was developed at IBM by a team led by John Backus. This language would go on to become one of the most popular programming languages ever created.

Development of modern programming languages

• The first modern programming languages were developed in the 1950s. These were FORTRAN, COBOL and LISP. They were all based on earlier languages and used very different approaches to programming.
• FORTRAN was designed for scientific and engineering applications. It was a very concise language that was easy to learn. COBOL was designed for business applications. It was much more verbose than FORTRAN, but it was also easier to read and understand. LISP was designed for artificial intelligence applications. It was a very expressive language that allowed programmers to write programs that were difficult to understand by other programmers.
• In the 1960s, more modern programming languages were developed, such as ALGOL and APL. These languages were more formal than the earlier languages and they introduced many new concepts that are now commonplace in programming, such as structured programming and data types.
• In the 1970s, even more modern programming languages were developed, such as C and Pascal. These languages emphasized efficiency and correctness over ease of use. They were also quite difficult to learn compared to the earlier generations of languages.
• In the 1980s, object-oriented programming became popular and many new languages were developed with this paradigm, such as Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada and C++. These languages allowed programmers to write programs that were much more modular and extensible than previous generations of languages.

Future of programming languages

• The future of programming languages is shrouded in mystery. No one can predict definitively what new languages will emerge or how existing languages will evolve. However, there are certain trends that suggest where the field may be headed.
• One trend is the increasing popularity of functional programming languages. These languages, which include Haskell, Lisp, and Scala, emphasize code that is concise and easy to reason about. They are well suited for parallel computing and have been gaining ground in recent years.
• Another trend is the rise of domain-specific languages (DSLs). DSLs are designed for specific tasks and can be more efficient than general-purpose languages for those tasks. For example, the R language was designed for statistical computing, while the Puppet language is used for configuring servers. As more and more domains are automated by software, it's likely that DSLs will become increasingly important.
• Finally, there is a trend toward greater simplicity in language design. This can be seen in the popularity of languages like Python and Ruby, which favor readability over complexity. It's also evident in the growing interest in statically typed languages like TypeScript and Rust, which aim to make programs more reliable by catching errors at compile time.
• As these trends suggest, the future of programming looks to be more diverse than ever before. There will continue to be a need for both general-purpose and domain-specific languages, as well as both dynamically typed and statically typed languages. And as always, new challenges