A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
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- 1801: Jacquard's loom uses punch cards to weave text, lacking modern features.
- 1842: Ada Lovelace writes the first program without a computer.
- 1936: Alan Turing and Alonzo Church independently invent all future programming languages.
- 1940s: Early computers programmed with wires and switches to avoid syntax debates.
- 1957: IBM's FORTRAN is created, requiring formal attire.
- 1958: LISP is invented but suffers from parentheses shortage.
- 1959: COBOL emerges from a bet with L. Ron Hubbard, leading to later controversies.
- 1964: BASIC is developed for non-computer scientists.
- 1970: Scheme and Pascal are introduced, criticized for not being C-like before C exists.
- 1972: Dennis Ritchie invents C and Unix; Prolog answers 'No.' to every query.
- 1973: ML is created based on M&M type theory, leading to SML and other variants.
- 1980: Alan Kay defines Smalltalk as objects all the way down to turtles.
- 1983: Ada is designed for the US DoD, with few completed programs; C++ is bolted onto C.
- 1986: Objective-C combines C and Smalltalk with memory safety issues.
- 1987: Perl is born from Larry Wall's accidental keyboard impression.
- 1990: Haskell introduces monads, confusing critics.
- 1991: Python is created with dictatorial principles.
- 1995: PHP, Ruby, and JavaScript are invented; JavaScript renamed multiple times.
- 1996: Java is released, heralded as novel despite similarities to earlier languages.
- 2001: C# follows Java's pattern, also hailed as novel.
- 2003: Scala unifies object-oriented and functional programming, angering both camps.