Timeline of programming languages

See also Alphabetical list, Categorical list, and Generational list; Programming language, Computing timeline, and History of computing hardware.

Table of contents

1 pre 1950 2 1950 3 1960 4 1970 5 1980 6 1990 7 2000

pre 1950

    Predecessor(s)  YEAR  PRODUCT -- Developer, Company

                 *  1840~ FIRST PROGRAM -- Lovelace
                 *  1945  Plankalkül -- Zuse 

                 *  1952  A-0 -- Hopper
                    1954  Mark I Autocode -- Brooker
               A-0  1954  ARITH-MATIC -- Hopper
               A-0  1955  MATH-MATIC -- Hopper
               A-0  1955  FLOW-MATIC -- Hopper
               A-0  1955  FORTRAN -- Backus
                    1956  Information Processing Language -- Newell, Shaw, Simon
        FLOW-MATIC  1957  COMTRAN -- Bemer
           FORTRAN  1958  FORTRAN II -- Backus
           FORTRAN  1958  Algol 58
                 *  1959  LISP McCarthy

FLOW-MATIC COMTRAN  1960  COBOL The Codasyl Committee
             ALGOL  1960  Algol 60
             ALGOL  1960  JOSS
        FORTRAN II  1962  FORTRAN IV
                 *  1962  APL -- Iverson
           ALGOL60  1962  Simula
        FORTRAN II  1962  SNOBOL -- Griswold, et al.
           ALGOL60  1963  CPL -- Barron, Strachey, et al.
            SNOBOL  1962  SNOBOL3 -- Griswold, et al.
          CPL LISP  1964  COWSEL Burstall, Popplestone
           ALGOL60  1964  PL/1 IBM team
  FORTRAN II, JOSS  1964  BASIC -- Kemeny and Kurtz
        FORTRAN II  1966  FORTRAN IV
              LISP  1966  ISWIM Landin
           ALGOL60  1966  CORAL66 Real Time version of Algol 60
               CPL  1967  BCPL -- Richards
      Fortran LISP  1967  MUMPS -- Massachusetts General Hospital
            Simula  1967  Simula67
           SNOBOL3  1967  SNOBOL4 -- Griswold, et al.
           Algol60  1968  ALGOL 68 -- Wijngaarten, et al.
            COWSEL  1968  POP-1 -- Burstall,  Popplestone

                    1968  Forth -- Moore (first paper, 1970) 
              Lisp  1968  Logo -- Papert

            POP-1   1970  POP-2 
           ALGOL60  1971  Pascal -- Wirth, Jensen
          Simula67  1972  Smalltalk Environment -- Smalltalk--Digitalk
            B BCPL  1972  C -- Ritchie
                 *  1973  PROLOG -- Colmeraurer 
             BASIC  1973  COMAL
              LISP  1975  Scheme -- Sussman, Steele
             BASIC  1975  Altair BASIC -- Gates, Allen
         C FORTRAN  1976  RATFOR -- Kernighan
             MUMPS  1977  X11.1 ANSI Standard MUMPS

        FORTRAN IV  1978  FORTRAN77
               ( *  1978  VISICALC -- Bricklin, Frankston)
          C SNOBOL  1979  Awk -- Aho, Kernighan
               ( *  1979  VULCAN DBASE-II -- Ratliff )
           Algol68  1979  Green -- Ichbiah et al., US Dept of Defense

        C Simula67  1980  C with Classes -- Stroustrup
          Simula67  1980  Smalltalk-80 -- Digitalk
             Green  1983  Ada -- US Dept of Defense
    C with Classes  1983  C++ -- Stroustrup
            Pascal  1983  Turbo Pascal -- Hejlsberg
                *   1984  Standard ML ML = Meta-Language
         1977MUMPS  1985  1984 MUMPS 
           ( dBase  1984  CLIPPER -- Nantucket )
           ( dBase  1985  PARADOX -- Borland )
          Simula67  1986  Eiffel -- Meyer
               ( *  1987  HyperCard -- Apple )
               ( *  1987  SQL-1 )
               Awk  1987  Perl -- Wall
            MATLAB  1988  Octave
         dBase-III  1988  dBaseIV
          Awk Lisp  1988  Tcl -- Ousterhout
      Turbo-Pascal  1989  Turbo-Pascal+OOP -- Borland
                 C  1989  Standard C -- ANSI X3.159-1989 (adopted by ISO in 1990)
  Pascal Modula-II  1989  OBERON -- Wirth

Haskell
         1984MUMPS  1990  1990 MUMPS        
                    1991  Python -- van Rossum
                    1991  Q
           ( SQL-1  1992  SQL-2 )
  Turbo-Pascal OOP  1992  Borland Pascal
                    1993  Brainfuck -- Mueller
    Perl Smalltalk  1993  Ruby
                    1993  Lua
            Ada 83  1995  Ada 95 -- ISO
    Borland Pascal  1995  Delphi(1) -- Borland
  C++ Internet OOP  1995  Java -- Sun Microsystems
         1990MUMPS  1995  1995 MUMPS 
    Standard ML,84  1997  SML'97  
             PHP 3  1997  PHP
            Scheme  1997  Pico -- Free University of Brussels
               C++  1998  C++98 -- ANSI/ISO Standard C++

Joy -- von Thun
     C C++ COM Java 2000  C# -- Microsoft
         DELPHI(5)  2001  KYLIX -- Borland
         Whitespace 2003  Whitespace -- Brady and Morris

Things with unknown or questionable dates:

                 *  197?  sh (Bourne Shell) -- Bourne
                sh  19??  ksh (Korn Shell) -- Korn
               ksh  199?  zsh (Z Shell)
          HyperCard 199?  AppleScript -- Apple
                  * 1990  Self -- Sun Microsystems Inc
          Self Java 199?  LiveScript -- Brendan Eich, Netscape (Self inspired, made for Java interactions)
         LiveScript 1995  JavaScript -- Netscape
         JavaScript 1997  ECMAScript -- ECMA TC39-TG1
                    2003  Rikstation

Legend:

OLD    <> NEW
Predecessor(s) etc   YEAR  PRODUCT -- developer, Company
(   Item  ) non 'universal programming language'
*   newly developededition