Timeline of programming languages

This is a chronological list of programming languages.

Legend:

( Entry ) means not a universal programming language

* <YEAR> means no direct predecessor / unique language


Predecessor(s)	Year	Name	Chief Developer, Company
Pre 1950
*	~1840	first program	Ada Lovelace
*	1936	Lambda calculus (concept)	Alonzo Church
*	1945	Plankalkül (concept)	Konrad Zuse
1950s
*	1952	A-0	Grace Hopper
*	1954	Mark I Autocode	Tony Brooker
A-0	1954-1955	FORTRAN "0" (concept)	John W. Backus at IBM
A-0	1954	ARITH-MATIC	Grace Hopper
A-0	1954	MATH-MATIC	Grace Hopper
*	1954	IPL V (concept)	Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, Herbert Simon
A-0	1955	FLOW-MATIC	Grace Hopper
IPL	1956-1958	LISP (concept)	John McCarthy
FLOW-MATIC	1957	COMTRAN	Bob Bemer
FORTRAN 0	1957	FORTRAN "I" (implementation)	John W. Backus at IBM
*	1957	COMIT (concept)
FORTRAN I	1958	FORTRAN II	John W. Backus at IBM
FORTRAN	1958	ALGOL 58 (IAL)	International effort
*	1958	IPL V (implementation)	Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, Herbert Simon
FLOW-MATIC, COMTRAN	1959	COBOL (concept)	The Codasyl Committee
IPL	1959	LISP (implementation)	John McCarthy
	1959	TRAC (concept)	Mooers
1960s
ALGOL 58	1960	ALGOL 60
FLOW-MATIC, COMTRAN	1960	COBOL 61 (implementation)	The Codasyl Committee
*	1961	COMIT (implementation)
FORTRAN II	1962	FORTRAN IV
*	1962	APL (concept)	Iverson
ALGOL 58	1962	MAD	Arden, et. al.
ALGOL 60	1962	SIMULA (concept)
FORTRAN II, COMIT	1962	SNOBOL	Griswold, et al.
ALGOL 60	1963	CPL	Barron, Strachey, et al.
SNOBOL	1963	SNOBOL3	Griswold, et al.
ALGOL 60	1963	ALGOL 68 (concept)	van Wijngaarden, et al.
ALGOL 58	1963	JOSS I	Cliff Shaw, RAND
CPL, LISP	1964	COWSEL	Burstall, Popplestone
ALGOL 60, COBOL, FORTRAN	1964	PL/I (concept)	IBM
FORTRAN II, JOSS	1964	BASIC	Kemeny and Kurtz
	1964	TRAC (implementation)	Mooers
	1964?	IITRAN
JOSS	1965	TELCOMP	BBN
JOSS I	1966	JOSS II	Chuck Baker, RAND
FORTRAN IV	1966	FORTRAN 66
LISP	1966	ISWIM	Landin
ALGOL 60	1966	CORAL66
CPL	1967	BCPL	Richards
FORTRAN, TELCOMP	1967	MUMPS	Massachusetts General Hospital
*	1967	APL (implementation)	Iverson
ALGOL 60	1967	SIMULA 67 (implementation)	Dahl, Myhrhaug,Nygaard at Norsk Regnesentral
SNOBOL3	1967	SNOBOL4	Griswold, et al.
PL/I	1967	XPL	W. M. Mckeeman, et al. at University Of California Santa Cruz, California J. J. Horning, et al. at Stanford University
COWSEL	1968	POP-1	Burstall, Popplestone
	1968	FORTH (concept)	Moore
LISP	1968	LOGO	Papert
*	1968	REFAL (implementation)	Valentin Turchin
ALGOL 60	1969	ALGOL 68 (implementation)	van Wijngaarden, et al.
ALGOL 60, COBOL, FORTRAN	1969	PL/I (implementation)	IBM
1970s
	1970?	FORTH (implementation)	Moore
POP-1	1970	POP-2
ALGOL 60	1971	Pascal	Wirth, Jensen
Pascal, XPL	1971	Sue	Holt et al. at University of Toronto
SIMULA 67	1972	Smalltalk-72	Xerox PARC
B, BCPL, ALGOL 68	1972	C	Ritchie
*	1972	INTERCAL
2-level W-Grammar	1972	Prolog	Colmerauer
Pascal, BASIC	1973	COMAL	Christensen, Løfstedt
Pascal, Sue	1973	LIS	Ichbiah et al. at CII Honeywell Bull
BASIC	1974	GRASS	DeFanti
Business BASIC	1974	BASIC FOUR	BASIC FOUR CORPORATION
LISP	1975	Scheme	Sussman, Steele
Pascal	1975?	Modula	Wirth
BASIC	1975	Altair BASIC	Gates, Allen
ALGOL 68, BLISS, ECL, HAL	1975	CS-4	Brosgol at Intermetrics
Smalltalk-72	1976	Smalltalk-76	Xerox PARC
C, FORTRAN	1976	Ratfor	Kernighan
*	1977	FP	John Backus
*	1977	Bourne Shell (sh)	Bourne
MUMPS	1977	Standard MUMPS
SNOBOL	1977	ICON(concept)	Griswold
ALGOL 68, LIS	1977	Green	Ichbiah et al. at CII Honeywell Bull for US Dept of Defense
ALGOL 68, CS-4	1977	Red	Brosgol et al. at Intermetrics for US Dept of Defense
ALGOL 68,	1977	Blue	Goodenough et al. at SofTech for US Dept of Defense
ALGOL 68,	1977	Yellow	Spitzen et al. at SRI International for US Dept of Defense
FORTRAN IV	1978	FORTRAN 77
Modula	1978?	Modula-2	Wirth
*	1978?	MATLAB	Moler at the University of New Mexico
Algol60	1978?	SMALL	Brownlee at the University of Auckland
*	1978	VISICALC	Bricklin, Frankston at VisiCorp
PL/I, BASIC, EXEC 2	1979	REXX	Cowlishaw
C, SNOBOL	1979	Awk	Aho, Weinberger, Kernighan
SNOBOL	1979	ICON(implementation)	Griswold
*	1979	Vulcan dBase-II	Ratliff
1980s
C, SIMULA 67	1980	C with Classes	Stroustrup
Smalltalk-76	1980	Smalltalk-80	Xerox PARC
Smalltalk, C	1982	Objective-C	Brad Cox
Green	1983	Ada 83	U.S. Department of Defense
C with Classes	1983	C++	Stroustrup
Pascal	1983	Turbo Pascal	Hejlsberg
BASIC	1983	True BASIC	Kemeny, Kurtz at Dartmouth College
sh	1984?	Korn Shell (ksh)	Dave Korn
*	1984	Standard ML
dBase	1984	CLIPPER	Nantucket
LISP	1984	Common Lisp	Guy Steele and many others
1977MUMPS	1985	1984 MUMPS
dBase	1985	PARADOX	Borland
Interpress	1985	PostScript	Warnock
BASIC	1985	QuickBASIC	Microsoft
	1986	Miranda	David Turner at University of Kent
	1986	LabVIEW	National Instruments
SIMULA 67	1986	Eiffel	Meyer
	1986	Informix-4GL	Informix
C	1986	PROMAL
Smalltalk	1987	Self (concept)	Sun Microsystems Inc.
*	1987	HyperTalk	Apple
*	1987	SQL-87
C, sed, awk, sh	1987	Perl	Wall
MATLAB	1988	Octave
dBase-III	1988	dBase-IV
Awk, Lisp	1988	Tcl	Ousterhout
REXX	1988	Object REXX	Simon Nash
Ada	1988	SPARK	Bernard A. Carré
Turbo Pascal	1989	Turbo Pascal OOP	Borland
C	1989	Standard C89/90	ANSI X3.159-1989 (adopted by ISO in 1990)
Modula-2	1989	Modula-3	Cardeli, et al.
Modula-2	1989	Oberon	Wirth
1990s
Oberon	1990	Object Oberon	Wirth
APL, FP	1990	J	Iverson, R. Hui at Iverson Software
Miranda	1990	Haskell
1984 MUMPS	1990	1990 MUMPS
Fortran 77	1991	Fortran 90
Object Oberon	1991	Oberon-2	Wirth
ABC	1991	Python	Van Rossum
	1991	Q
QuickBASIC	1991	Visual Basic	Alan Cooper at Microsoft
SQL-87	1992	SQL-92
Turbo Pascal OOP	1992	Borland Pascal
ksh	1993?	Z Shell (zsh)
Smalltalk	1993?	Self (implementation)	Sun Microsystems Inc.
Forth	1993	FALSE	Oortmerrsen
FALSE	1993	Brainfuck	Müller
HyperTalk	1993	Revolution Transcript
HyperTalk	1993	AppleScript	Apple
APL, Lisp	1993	K	Whitney
Smalltalk, Perl	1993	Ruby
	1993	Lua	Roberto Ierusalimschy et al. at Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
C	1993	ZPL	Chamberlain et al. at University of Washington
Lisp	1994	Dylan	many people at Apple Computer
Ada 83	1995	Ada 95	ISO
Borland Pascal	1995	Delphi	Anders Hejlsberg at Borland
C, SIMULA67 OR C++, Smalltalk	1995	Java	James Gosling at Sun Microsystems
1990MUMPS	1995	1995 MUMPS
Self, Java	1995?	LiveScript	Brendan Eich atNetscape
Fortran 90	1996	Fortran 95
APL, Perl	1996	Perl Data Language (PDL)	Karl Glazebrook, Jarle Brinchmann, Tuomas Lukka, and Christian Soeller
REXX	1996	NetRexx	Cowlishaw
LiveScript	1997?	JavaScript	Brendan Eich at Netscape
SML 84	1997	SML 97
PHP 3	1997	PHP
Scheme	1997	Pico	Free University of Brussels
Smalltalk-80, Self	1997	Squeak Smalltalk	Alan Kay, et al. at Apple Computer
JavaScript	1997?	ECMAScript	ECMA TC39-TG1
C++, Standard C	1998	Standard C++	ANSI/ISO Standard C++
Prolog	1998	Erlang	Open Source Erlang at Ericsson
Standard C89/90	1999	Standard C99	ISO/IEC 9899:1999
2000s
FP, Forth	2000	Joy	von Thun
C, C++	2000	D	Walter Bright at Digital Mars
C, C++, Java	2000	C#	Anders Hejlsberg at Microsoft(ECMA)
Scriptol	2001	Scriptol	Denis Sureau at Scriptol.org
Whitespace	2003	Whitespace	Brady and Morris
Perl, C++	2003	S2	Fitzpatrick, Atkins
C#, ML, MetaHaskell	2003	Nemerle	University of Wroclaw
J, FL, K	2003	NGL	E. Herrera at Tlällian
Joy, Forth, Lisp	2003	Factor	Slava Pestov
Fortran 95	2004	Fortran 2003
Python, C#, Ruby	2004	Boo	Rodrigo B. de Oliveira