Start here · Essential guide
A Plain-Language History of Programming Languages
Why so many programming languages exist, and what each generation, from machine code to scripting, tried to make easier for the people writing programs.
Software and Applications
Programming Languages
How people came to write instructions for machines, and why so many languages exist.
BASIC and Programming for Beginners
How BASIC, created at Dartmouth in the 1960s for students, spread to time-sharing users and then to the first home computer owners in the 1970s and 1980s.
COBOL and the Language of Business Data
How a committee effort around 1959 aimed to create a shared, readable language for business records, and why COBOL programs are still maintained today.
Compilers and Interpreters: Two Ways to Run Code
A plain explanation of the difference between translating a whole program ahead of time and running it step by step, with history and trade-offs.
FORTRAN and the Rise of Scientific Programming
How an IBM team in the 1950s tried to let scientists and engineers write formulas instead of machine code, and why FORTRAN's compiler mattered.
Lisp and the Symbolic Programming Tradition
How Lisp, developed in the late 1950s, treated programs and data as lists, and why that made it a favorite for early artificial intelligence research.
Object-Oriented Programming Ideas and Their Origins
What bundling data with behavior means, and the several research lines from simulation, graphics and Smalltalk that led to object-oriented programming.
Scripting Languages and Everyday Automation
How lightweight languages such as shell scripts, Perl, Python and JavaScript grew up to glue tasks together, process text and build web pages.
The C Language and Portable System Software
How a compact language developed at Bell Labs in the early 1970s helped Unix and other operating systems move between very different machines.
Related topics
More in software and applications
Engineering Software Computers as tools for design, simulation and making things. Graphics and Games Pictures, animation, games and virtual worlds made by computers. Business Software How firms came to track customers, money and marketing with computers. Learning and Language Computers used for teaching and translating. Sound and Speech Computers making music and understanding spoken words. Video Game History Themes in the history of games: consoles, home coders, genres and sound.