Mother Tongues — Tracing the roots of computer languages through the ages

Mother Just like half of the world's spoken tongues, most of the 2,300-plus computer programming languages are either endangered or extinct. As powerhouses C/C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Java, and other modern source codes dominate our systems, hundreds of older languages are running out of life. An ad hoc collection of engineers - electronic lexicographers, if you will - aim to save, or at least document, the lingo of classic software. They're combing the globe's 9 million developers in search of coders still fluent in these nearly forgotten lingua francas. Among the most endangered are Ada, APL, B (the predecessor of C), Lisp, Oberon, Smalltalk, and Simula. Code-raker Grady Booch, Rational Software's chief scientist, is working with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to record and, in some cases, maintain languages by writing new compilers so our ever-changing hardware can grok the code. Why bother? "They tell us about the state of software practice, the minds of their inventors, and the technical, social, and economic forces that shaped history at the time," Booch explains. "They'll provide the raw material for software archaeologists, historians, and developers to learn what worked, what was brilliant, and what was an utter failure." Here's a peek at the strongest branches of programming's family tree. For a nearly exhaustive rundown, check out the Language List at www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/Java/misc/lang_list.html. - Michael Menduno Key 1954 Year Introduced Active: thousands of users Tongues Protected: taught at universities; compilers available Endangered: usage dropping off Extinct: no known active users or up-to-date Tracing the roots of computer languages through the ages compilers Lineage continues 1954 |1955 1956 1957 | 1958 1959 1960 |1961 1962 |1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 | 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 |1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 |2000 2001 Fortran Fortran IV Fortran 90 ISO/IEC Created for the IBM 7090/94. Once one of the most widely used languagos in science and engineering. Flow-Matic Cobol Cobol 61 ANSI Cobol 74 ANSI Cobol 85 00 Cobol A Lisp-like by MIT researchage designed Papert to make programming accessible to children through graphics and simple syntax. A Lisp offshoot that's still used in introduc- tory programming classes at universities. Seymour Scheme 84 The culprit behind many Y2K bugs Also known as Common Business- Oriented Language. Uriginally B-0. Scheme Scheme IEEE Scheme R5RS One of the first English-like data-processing languages George Redin's attempt to combine the best features of Fortran, Cobol, and Algol 60. Haskell 1.0 Haskell 1.1 Object Logo Common Lisp Object System Logo Clos IPL Lisp Common Lisp ANSI Common Lisp Possibly the first list-processing language; used in Al guru Ed Feigenbau PhD Invented by John McCarthy at MIT, Lisp has an unusual PL/1 ANSI PL/1 Self 4.0 Self The version Xerox released to the public. narenther Algorithmic Languago, designed as a portable language for computations. Algol 68's complexity was either ahead of its time or rightfully doomed, depending on whom you ask. Still popular with Al researchers. A simple object- oriented language. Initially called Oak. Still one of the fastest-growing languages around, despite the standards feud between Sun and Microsoft. Somewhat like C++, Java allows for "write once, run anywhere" portability across the Net. PL/M NetRexx Programming Language/Microcomputers Smalltalk Smalltalk-80 The first language to show off the power of object-oriented code. Developed by Software Concepts Group, Xerox PARC, led by Alan Kay. Algol 58 Algol 68 Rex 1.00 Rex 2.00 Object Rexx Interactive A simple language object- Restructured Extended Executor An object-oriented language. The hoped-for Esperanto of the computing nal Zurich- by an based committee as a universal language, it was one of the first attempts at making software more portable. Initially called International Algebraic Language. Simula Simula 67 (A = argument, B Java Java 2 (v1.3) world. Designed oriented basic value, C= ?). language. Popular in Europe during the 70s, Simula introduced the now-standard concept of object-oriented, rather than procedural, programming. Designed by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl All-purpose version of Simula. Microsoft's answer to Java, it is a key component of the Microsoft Net platform for Web services. Eiffel Eiffel 3 Macro and text-processing language used by Unix admins to manipulate large config files programmatically, rather than editing them by Prolog Objective-C Clu Programmation en Logique for natural- language processing. Popular for Al programs. New AWK, a pattern scanning and pro- cessing language. A hardware description language. ABC Sather 0.1 Ruby Called Cluster, it's an object-oriented academic language created to teach rigid engineering skills. yhand. Python Python 1.6 A popular language among Web site builders, it includes features missing from Perl. AWK NAWK ECMA Script Possibly the most common language today. Adds object- oriented features to C. Microsoft's version of JavaScript. Can't they share anything? :) Cmm JavaScript Tool Command Language, "tickle." The duct tape of programming (a scripting language for patching together different languages). C# Survival of the Fittest C--, a scripting language. JScript One of the most widely deployed C with Classes C+ Internet C++ Reasons a language endures, with examples of some classic tongues Hanguages today. Windows :OSes are written mostly in and C and its descendants. Concurrent C Tcl Tcl/Tk Tcl/Tk 8.1 Appeals to a wide audience C (bolstered by the popularity of Unix) ANSI C (C89) ISO C (C95) Updates C+ for the Net with a Java-like virtual machine, so code kind of computer. BCPL Gets a job done Cobol (designed for business-report writing) Basic Combined Programming Language ADA ADA 83 ADA 95 run on any Delivers new functionality Java (runs on any hardware platform) Found in millions of Web pages. Originally dubbed LiveScript, it was renamed by Netscape marketers who licensed the name to ride Java's buzz. It has little in common with that language. A teaching language named for French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Designed by legendary Swiss programmer Niklaus Wirth for simplicity, in reaction to the complexity of Algol 68. The US Department of Defense's effort to craft a standard object-oriented language for its work. Named after Ada Lovelace, arguably the world's first computer programmer, and created by Jean Ichbiah's team at Honeywell. Fills a niche Mathematica (speeds up complex computations) Modula 3 Offers a modicum of elegance Icon (has friendly, line-oriented syntax) Used primarily for non-numeric Modula Modula 2 ISO programming Object-oriented Pascal, designed Object Pascal for simplicity. Another creation of Niklaus Wirth. Later modified by Robert Griesemer for numerical apps on supercomputers. Has a powerful user base or backer C# (developed by Microsoft for .Net) Modular Language Oberon Delphi Has a charismatic leader Perl (programmer-author Larry Wall) Pascal of programming (aka Practical Extraction and The Swiss Army Knife Report Language), used for patching together different languages. Spawned a quasi-literary culture that writes Perl haiku. Csh Perl 1.000 Perl 4.000 String-processing language for text and formula manipulation, common in text processors. Invented by David Farber, Ralph Griswold, and Ivan Polonsky at Bell Labs. Programmer's easy street - with this descendant of Snobol, there's no need to know the underlying OS. sh Ksh A general-purpose language known for its beauty and grace. Designed by Ralph Griswold to be successor to Snobol4. C-Shell, a scripting language and command- shell interpreter. Written by C programmers to make Unix command lines more like C's. Standard ML, a general-purpose language. The kitchen sink of command-line programming features for Unix, based on the original Bourne shell (aka Bourne Again Shell). Frame-based language. Bash King of the one-liners, also referred to as A Programming Language. An algebra-like I a special set of chare wnr writing complex programs as short formulas. Designed by Kenneth Iverson at Harvard. Snobol Snobol4 ML SML SML 90 SML 97 Icon Meta Language Page-description language for printers and graphics systems; 75 percent of all commercial documents are produced on PostScript printers. Objective Caml o Caml 2 Word-based language first used to guide the National Radio Astronomy Observatory telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Caml Caml 2-6.1 O Caml 3.00 Forth PostScript PostScript Level 2 Although mocked by "real" programmers for its limited abilities, Basic has outlived many more advanced languages, as well as the RadioShack TRS-80 computers that made it a household word. Stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Categorical Abstract Machine Language APL APL 96 Microsoft Basic The Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages. Popular for building Web sites with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools. Basic MS Basic 2.0 Visual Basic Sources: Paul Boutin; Brent Hailpern, associate director of computer science at IBM Research; The Retrocomputing Museum; Todd Proebsting, senior researcher at Microsoft; Gio Wiederhold, computer scientist, Stanford University Mother Just like half of the world's spoken tongues, most of the 2,300-plus computer programming languages are either endangered or extinct. As powerhouses C/C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Java, and other modern source codes dominate our systems, hundreds of older languages are running out of life. An ad hoc collection of engineers - electronic lexicographers, if you will - aim to save, or at least document, the lingo of classic software. They're combing the globe's 9 million developers in search of coders still fluent in these nearly forgotten lingua francas. Among the most endangered are Ada, APL, B (the predecessor of C), Lisp, Oberon, Smalltalk, and Simula. Code-raker Grady Booch, Rational Software's chief scientist, is working with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to record and, in some cases, maintain languages by writing new compilers so our ever-changing hardware can grok the code. Why bother? "They tell us about the state of software practice, the minds of their inventors, and the technical, social, and economic forces that shaped history at the time," Booch explains. "They'll provide the raw material for software archaeologists, historians, and developers to learn what worked, what was brilliant, and what was an utter failure." Here's a peek at the strongest branches of programming's family tree. For a nearly exhaustive rundown, check out the Language List at www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/Java/misc/lang_list.html. - Michael Menduno Key 1954 Year Introduced Active: thousands of users Tongues Protected: taught at universities; compilers available Endangered: usage dropping off Extinct: no known active users or up-to-date Tracing the roots of computer languages through the ages compilers Lineage continues 1954 |1955 1956 1957 | 1958 1959 1960 |1961 1962 |1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 | 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 |1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 |2000 2001 Fortran Fortran IV Fortran 90 ISO/IEC Created for the IBM 7090/94. Once one of the most widely used languagos in science and engineering. Flow-Matic Cobol Cobol 61 ANSI Cobol 74 ANSI Cobol 85 00 Cobol A Lisp-like by MIT researchage designed Papert to make programming accessible to children through graphics and simple syntax. A Lisp offshoot that's still used in introduc- tory programming classes at universities. Seymour Scheme 84 The culprit behind many Y2K bugs Also known as Common Business- Oriented Language. Uriginally B-0. Scheme Scheme IEEE Scheme R5RS One of the first English-like data-processing languages George Redin's attempt to combine the best features of Fortran, Cobol, and Algol 60. Haskell 1.0 Haskell 1.1 Object Logo Common Lisp Object System Logo Clos IPL Lisp Common Lisp ANSI Common Lisp Possibly the first list-processing language; used in Al guru Ed Feigenbau PhD Invented by John McCarthy at MIT, PL/1 ANSI PL/1 Self Self 4.0 Lisp has an unusual x made narenther The version Xerox released to the public. Algorithmic Languago, designed as a portable language for computations. Algol 68's complexity was either ahead of its time or rightfully doomed, depending on whom you ask. Still popular with Al researchers. A simple object- oriented language. Initially called Oak. Still one of the fastest-growing languages around, despite the standards feud between Sun and Microsoft. Somewhat like C++, Java allows for "write once, run anywhere" portability across the Net. PL/M NetRexx Programming Language/Microcomputers Smalltalk Smalltalk-80 The first language to show off the power of object-oriented code. Developed by Software Concepts Group, Xerox PARC, led by Alan Kay. Algol 58 Algol 68 Rex 1.00 Rex 2.00 Object Rexx Interactive A simple language object- Restructured Extended Executor An object-oriented language. The hoped-for Esperanto of the computing nal Zurich- by an based committee as a universal language, it was one of the first attempts at making software more portable. Initially called International Algebraic Language. Simula Simula 67 (A = argument, B Java Java 2 (v1.3) world. Designed oriented basic value, C= ?). language. Popular in Europe during the 70s, Simula introduced the now-standard concept of object-oriented, rather than procedural, programming. Designed by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl All-purpose version of Simula. Microsoft's answer to Java, it is a key component of the Microsoft Net platform for Web services. Eiffel Eiffel 3 Macro and text-processing language used by Unix admins to manipulate large config files programmatically, rather than editing them by h Prolog Objective-C Clu Programmation en Logique for natural- language processing. Popular for Al programs. New AWK, a pattern scanning and pro- cessing language. A hardware description language. ABC Sather 0.1 Ruby Called Cluster, it's an object-oriented academic language created to teach rigid engineering skills. yhand. Python Python 1.6 A popular language among Web site builders, it includes features missing from Perl. AWK NAWK ECMA Script Possibly the most common language today. Adds object- oriented features to C. Microsoft's version of JavaScript. Can't they share anything? :) Cmm JavaScript Tool Command Language, "tickle." The duct tape of programming (a scripting language for patching together different languages). C# Survival of the Fittest C--, a scripting language. JScript One of the most widely deployed C with Classes C+ Internet C++ Reasons a language endures, with examples of some classic tongues Hanguages today. Windows :OSes are written mostly in and C and its descendants. Concurrent C Tcl Tcl/Tk Tcl/Tk 8.1 Appeals to a wide audience C (bolstered by the popularity of Unix) ANSI C (C89) ISO C (C95) Updates C+ for the Net with a Java-like virtual machine, so code kind of computer. BCPL C Gets a job done Cobol (designed for business-report writing) Basic Combined Programming Language ADA ADA 83 ADA 95 run on any Delivers new functionality Java (runs on any hardware platform) Found in millions of Web pages. Originally dubbed LiveScript, it was renamed by Netscape marketers who licensed the name to ride Java's buzz. It has little in common with that language. A teaching language named for French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Designed by legendary Swiss programmer Niklaus Wirth for simplicity, in reaction to the complexity of Algol 68. The US Department of Defense's effort to craft a standard object-oriented language for its work. Named after Ada Lovelace, arguably the world's first computer programmer, and created by Jean Ichbiah's team at Honeywell. Fills a niche Mathematica (speeds up complex computations) Modula 3 Offers a modicum of elegance Icon (has friendly, line-oriented syntax) Used primarily for non-numeric Modula Modula 2 ISO programming Object-oriented Pascal, designed Object Pascal for simplicity. Another creation of Niklaus Wirth. Later modified by Robert Griesemer for numerical apps on supercomputers. Has a powerful user base or backer C# (developed by Microsoft for .Net) Modular Language Oberon Delphi Has a charismatic leader Perl (programmer-author Larry Wall) Pascal of programming (aka Practical Extraction and The Swiss Army Knife Report Language), used for patching together different languages. Spawned a quasi-literary culture that writes Perl haiku. Csh Perl 1.000 Perl 4.000 String-processing language for text and formula manipulation, common in text processors. Invented by David Farber, Ralph Griswold, and Ivan Polonsky at Bell Labs. Programmer's easy street - with this descendant of Snobol, there's no need to know the underlying OS. sh Ksh A general-purpose language known for its beauty and grace. Designed by Ralph Griswold to be successor to Snobol4. C-Shell, a scripting language and command- shell interpreter. Written by C programmers to make Unix command lines more like C's. Standard ML, a general-purpose language. The kitchen sink of command-line programming features for Unix, based on the original Bourne shell (aka Bourne Again Shell). Frame-based language. Bash King of the one-liners, also referred to as A Programming Language. An algebra-like I a special set of chare wnr writing complex programs as short formulas. Designed by Kenneth Iverson at Harvard. Snobol Snobol4 ML SML SML 90 SML 97 Icon Meta Language Page-description language for printers and graphics systems; 75 percent of all commercial documents are produced on PostScript printers. Objective Caml o Caml 2 Word-based language first used to guide the National Radio Astronomy Observatory telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Caml Caml 2-6.1 O Caml 3.00 Forth PostScript PostScript Level 2 Although mocked by "real" programmers for its limited abilities, Basic has outlived many more advanced languages, as well as the RadioShack TRS-80 computers that made it a household word. Stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Categorical Abstract Machine Language APL APL 96 Microsoft Basic The Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages. Popular for building Web sites with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools. Basic MS Basic 2.0 Visual Basic Sources: Paul Boutin; Brent Hailpern, associate director of computer science at IBM Research; The Retrocomputing Museum; Todd Proebsting, senior researcher at Microsoft; Gio Wiederhold, computer scientist, Stanford University Mother Just like half of the world's spoken tongues, most of the 2,300-plus computer programming languages are either endangered or extinct. As powerhouses C/C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Java, and other modern source codes dominate our systems, hundreds of older languages are running out of life. An ad hoc collection of engineers - electronic lexicographers, if you will - aim to save, or at least document, the lingo of classic software. They're combing the globe's 9 million developers in search of coders still fluent in these nearly forgotten lingua francas. Among the most endangered are Ada, APL, B (the predecessor of C), Lisp, Oberon, Smalltalk, and Simula. Code-raker Grady Booch, Rational Software's chief scientist, is working with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to record and, in some cases, maintain languages by writing new compilers so our ever-changing hardware can grok the code. Why bother? "They tell us about the state of software practice, the minds of their inventors, and the technical, social, and economic forces that shaped history at the time," Booch explains. "They'll provide the raw material for software archaeologists, historians, and developers to learn what worked, what was brilliant, and what was an utter failure." Here's a peek at the strongest branches of programming's family tree. For a nearly exhaustive rundown, check out the Language List at www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/Java/misc/lang_list.html. - Michael Menduno Key 1954 Year Introduced Active: thousands of users Tongues Protected: taught at universities; compilers available Endangered: usage dropping off Extinct: no known active users or up-to-date Tracing the roots of computer languages through the ages compilers Lineage continues 1954 |1955 1956 1957 | 1958 1959 1960 |1961 1962 |1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 | 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 |1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 |2000 2001 Fortran Fortran IV Fortran 90 ISO/IEC Created for the IBM 7090/94. Once one of the most widely used languagos in science and engineering. Flow-Matic Cobol Cobol 61 ANSI Cobol 74 ANSI Cobol 85 00 Cobol A Lisp-like by MIT researchage designed Papert to make programming accessible to children through graphics and simple syntax. A Lisp offshoot that's still used in introduc- tory programming classes at universities. Seymour Scheme 84 The culprit behind many Y2K bugs Also known as Common Business- Oriented Language. Uriginally B-0. Scheme Scheme IEEE Scheme R5RS One of the first English-like data-processing languages George Redin's attempt to combine the best features of Fortran, Cobol, and Algol 60. Haskell 1.0 Haskell 1.1 Object Logo Common Lisp Object System Logo Clos IPL Lisp Common Lisp ANSI Common Lisp Possibly the first list-processing language; used in Al guru Ed Feigenbau PhD Invented by John McCarthy at MIT, PL/1 ANSI PL/1 Self Self 4.0 Lisp has an unusual x made narenther The version Xerox released to the public. Algorithmic Languago, designed as a portable language for computations. Algol 68's complexity was either ahead of its time or rightfully doomed, depending on whom you ask. Still popular with Al researchers. A simple object- oriented language. Initially called Oak. Still one of the fastest-growing languages around, despite the standards feud between Sun and Microsoft. Somewhat like C++, Java allows for "write once, run anywhere" portability across the Net. PL/M NetRexx Programming Language/Microcomputers Smalltalk Smalltalk-80 The first language to show off the power of object-oriented code. Developed by Software Concepts Group, Xerox PARC, led by Alan Kay. Algol 58 Algol 68 Rex 1.00 Rex 2.00 Object Rexx Interactive A simple language object- Restructured Extended Executor An object-oriented language. The hoped-for Esperanto of the computing nal Zurich- by an based committee as a universal language, it was one of the first attempts at making software more portable. Initially called International Algebraic Language. Simula Simula 67 (A = argument, B Java Java 2 (v1.3) world. Designed oriented basic value, C= ?). language. Popular in Europe during the 70s, Simula introduced the now-standard concept of object-oriented, rather than procedural, programming. Designed by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl All-purpose version of Simula. Microsoft's answer to Java, it is a key component of the Microsoft Net platform for Web services. Eiffel Eiffel 3 Macro and text-processing language used by Unix admins to manipulate large config files programmatically, rather than editing them by h Prolog Objective-C Clu Programmation en Logique for natural- language processing. Popular for Al programs. New AWK, a pattern scanning and pro- cessing language. A hardware description language. ABC Sather 0.1 Ruby Called Cluster, it's an object-oriented academic language created to teach rigid engineering skills. yhand. Python Python 1.6 A popular language among Web site builders, it includes features missing from Perl. AWK NAWK ECMA Script Possibly the most common language today. Adds object- oriented features to C. Microsoft's version of JavaScript. Can't they share anything? :) Cmm JavaScript Tool Command Language, "tickle." The duct tape of programming (a scripting language for patching together different languages). C# Survival of the Fittest C--, a scripting language. JScript One of the most widely deployed C with Classes C+ Internet C++ Reasons a language endures, with examples of some classic tongues Hanguages today. Windows :OSes are written mostly in and C and its descendants. Concurrent C Tcl Tcl/Tk Tcl/Tk 8.1 Appeals to a wide audience C (bolstered by the popularity of Unix) ANSI C (C89) ISO C (C95) Updates C+ for the Net with a Java-like virtual machine, so code kind of computer. BCPL C Gets a job done Cobol (designed for business-report writing) Basic Combined Programming Language ADA ADA 83 ADA 95 run on any Delivers new functionality Java (runs on any hardware platform) Found in millions of Web pages. Originally dubbed LiveScript, it was renamed by Netscape marketers who licensed the name to ride Java's buzz. It has little in common with that language. A teaching language named for French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Designed by legendary Swiss programmer Niklaus Wirth for simplicity, in reaction to the complexity of Algol 68. The US Department of Defense's effort to craft a standard object-oriented language for its work. Named after Ada Lovelace, arguably the world's first computer programmer, and created by Jean Ichbiah's team at Honeywell. Fills a niche Mathematica (speeds up complex computations) Modula 3 Offers a modicum of elegance Icon (has friendly, line-oriented syntax) Used primarily for non-numeric Modula Modula 2 ISO programming Object-oriented Pascal, designed Object Pascal for simplicity. Another creation of Niklaus Wirth. Later modified by Robert Griesemer for numerical apps on supercomputers. Has a powerful user base or backer C# (developed by Microsoft for .Net) Modular Language Oberon Delphi Has a charismatic leader Perl (programmer-author Larry Wall) Pascal of programming (aka Practical Extraction and The Swiss Army Knife Report Language), used for patching together different languages. Spawned a quasi-literary culture that writes Perl haiku. Csh Perl 1.000 Perl 4.000 String-processing language for text and formula manipulation, common in text processors. Invented by David Farber, Ralph Griswold, and Ivan Polonsky at Bell Labs. Programmer's easy street - with this descendant of Snobol, there's no need to know the underlying OS. sh Ksh A general-purpose language known for its beauty and grace. Designed by Ralph Griswold to be successor to Snobol4. C-Shell, a scripting language and command- shell interpreter. Written by C programmers to make Unix command lines more like C's. Standard ML, a general-purpose language. The kitchen sink of command-line programming features for Unix, based on the original Bourne shell (aka Bourne Again Shell). Frame-based language. Bash King of the one-liners, also referred to as A Programming Language. An algebra-like I a special set of chare wnr writing complex programs as short formulas. Designed by Kenneth Iverson at Harvard. Snobol Snobol4 ML SML SML 90 SML 97 Icon Meta Language Page-description language for printers and graphics systems; 75 percent of all commercial documents are produced on PostScript printers. Objective Caml o Caml 2 Word-based language first used to guide the National Radio Astronomy Observatory telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Caml Caml 2-6.1 O Caml 3.00 Forth PostScript PostScript Level 2 Although mocked by "real" programmers for its limited abilities, Basic has outlived many more advanced languages, as well as the RadioShack TRS-80 computers that made it a household word. Stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Categorical Abstract Machine Language APL APL 96 Microsoft Basic The Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages. Popular for building Web sites with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools. Basic MS Basic 2.0 Visual Basic Sources: Paul Boutin; Brent Hailpern, associate director of computer science at IBM Research; The Retrocomputing Museum; Todd Proebsting, senior researcher at Microsoft; Gio Wiederhold, computer scientist, Stanford University Mother Just like half of the world's spoken tongues, most of the 2,300-plus computer programming languages are either endangered or extinct. As powerhouses C/C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Java, and other modern source codes dominate our systems, hundreds of older languages are running out of life. An ad hoc collection of engineers - electronic lexicographers, if you will - aim to save, or at least document, the lingo of classic software. They're combing the globe's 9 million developers in search of coders still fluent in these nearly forgotten lingua francas. Among the most endangered are Ada, APL, B (the predecessor of C), Lisp, Oberon, Smalltalk, and Simula. Code-raker Grady Booch, Rational Software's chief scientist, is working with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to record and, in some cases, maintain languages by writing new compilers so our ever-changing hardware can grok the code. Why bother? "They tell us about the state of software practice, the minds of their inventors, and the technical, social, and economic forces that shaped history at the time," Booch explains. "They'll provide the raw material for software archaeologists, historians, and developers to learn what worked, what was brilliant, and what was an utter failure." Here's a peek at the strongest branches of programming's family tree. For a nearly exhaustive rundown, check out the Language List at www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/Java/misc/lang_list.html. - Michael Menduno Key 1954 Year Introduced Active: thousands of users Tongues Protected: taught at universities; compilers available Endangered: usage dropping off Extinct: no known active users or up-to-date Tracing the roots of computer languages through the ages compilers Lineage continues 1954 |1955 1956 1957 | 1958 1959 1960 |1961 1962 |1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 | 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 |1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 |2000 2001 Fortran Fortran IV Fortran 90 ISO/IEC Created for the IBM 7090/94. Once one of the most widely used languagos in science and engineering. Flow-Matic Cobol Cobol 61 ANSI Cobol 74 ANSI Cobol 85 00 Cobol A Lisp-like by MIT researchage designed Papert to make programming accessible to children through graphics and simple syntax. A Lisp offshoot that's still used in introduc- tory programming classes at universities. Seymour Scheme 84 The culprit behind many Y2K bugs Also known as Common Business- Oriented Language. Uriginally B-0. Scheme Scheme IEEE Scheme R5RS One of the first English-like data-processing languages George Redin's attempt to combine the best features of Fortran, Cobol, and Algol 60. Haskell 1.0 Haskell 1.1 Object Logo Common Lisp Object System Logo Clos IPL Lisp Common Lisp ANSI Common Lisp Possibly the first list-processing language; used in Al guru Ed Feigenbau PhD Invented by John McCarthy at MIT, PL/1 ANSI PL/1 Self Self 4.0 Lisp has an unusual x made narenther The version Xerox released to the public. Algorithmic Languago, designed as a portable language for computations. Algol 68's complexity was either ahead of its time or rightfully doomed, depending on whom you ask. Still popular with Al researchers. A simple object- oriented language. Initially called Oak. Still one of the fastest-growing languages around, despite the standards feud between Sun and Microsoft. Somewhat like C++, Java allows for "write once, run anywhere" portability across the Net. PL/M NetRexx Programming Language/Microcomputers Smalltalk Smalltalk-80 The first language to show off the power of object-oriented code. Developed by Software Concepts Group, Xerox PARC, led by Alan Kay. Algol 58 Algol 68 Rex 1.00 Rex 2.00 Object Rexx Interactive A simple language object- Restructured Extended Executor An object-oriented language. The hoped-for Esperanto of the computing nal Zurich- by an based committee as a universal language, it was one of the first attempts at making software more portable. Initially called International Algebraic Language. Simula Simula 67 (A = argument, B Java Java 2 (v1.3) world. Designed oriented basic value, C= ?). language. Popular in Europe during the 70s, Simula introduced the now-standard concept of object-oriented, rather than procedural, programming. Designed by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl All-purpose version of Simula. Microsoft's answer to Java, it is a key component of the Microsoft Net platform for Web services. Eiffel Eiffel 3 Macro and text-processing language used by Unix admins to manipulate large config files programmatically, rather than editing them by h Prolog Objective-C Clu Programmation en Logique for natural- language processing. Popular for Al programs. New AWK, a pattern scanning and pro- cessing language. A hardware description language. ABC Sather 0.1 Ruby Called Cluster, it's an object-oriented academic language created to teach rigid engineering skills. yhand. Python Python 1.6 A popular language among Web site builders, it includes features missing from Perl. AWK NAWK ECMA Script Possibly the most common language today. Adds object- oriented features to C. Microsoft's version of JavaScript. Can't they share anything? :) Cmm JavaScript Tool Command Language, "tickle." The duct tape of programming (a scripting language for patching together different languages). C# Survival of the Fittest C--, a scripting language. JScript One of the most widely deployed C with Classes C+ Internet C++ Reasons a language endures, with examples of some classic tongues Hanguages today. Windows :OSes are written mostly in and C and its descendants. Concurrent C Tcl Tcl/Tk Tcl/Tk 8.1 Appeals to a wide audience C (bolstered by the popularity of Unix) ANSI C (C89) ISO C (C95) Updates C+ for the Net with a Java-like virtual machine, so code kind of computer. BCPL C Gets a job done Cobol (designed for business-report writing) Basic Combined Programming Language ADA ADA 83 ADA 95 run on any Delivers new functionality Java (runs on any hardware platform) Found in millions of Web pages. Originally dubbed LiveScript, it was renamed by Netscape marketers who licensed the name to ride Java's buzz. It has little in common with that language. A teaching language named for French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Designed by legendary Swiss programmer Niklaus Wirth for simplicity, in reaction to the complexity of Algol 68. The US Department of Defense's effort to craft a standard object-oriented language for its work. Named after Ada Lovelace, arguably the world's first computer programmer, and created by Jean Ichbiah's team at Honeywell. Fills a niche Mathematica (speeds up complex computations) Modula 3 Offers a modicum of elegance Icon (has friendly, line-oriented syntax) Used primarily for non-numeric Modula Modula 2 ISO programming Object-oriented Pascal, designed Object Pascal for simplicity. Another creation of Niklaus Wirth. Later modified by Robert Griesemer for numerical apps on supercomputers. Has a powerful user base or backer C# (developed by Microsoft for .Net) Modular Language Oberon Delphi Has a charismatic leader Perl (programmer-author Larry Wall) Pascal of programming (aka Practical Extraction and The Swiss Army Knife Report Language), used for patching together different languages. Spawned a quasi-literary culture that writes Perl haiku. Csh Perl 1.000 Perl 4.000 String-processing language for text and formula manipulation, common in text processors. Invented by David Farber, Ralph Griswold, and Ivan Polonsky at Bell Labs. Programmer's easy street - with this descendant of Snobol, there's no need to know the underlying OS. sh Ksh A general-purpose language known for its beauty and grace. Designed by Ralph Griswold to be successor to Snobol4. C-Shell, a scripting language and command- shell interpreter. Written by C programmers to make Unix command lines more like C's. Standard ML, a general-purpose language. The kitchen sink of command-line programming features for Unix, based on the original Bourne shell (aka Bourne Again Shell). Frame-based language. Bash King of the one-liners, also referred to as A Programming Language. An algebra-like I a special set of chare wnr writing complex programs as short formulas. Designed by Kenneth Iverson at Harvard. Snobol Snobol4 ML SML SML 90 SML 97 Icon Meta Language Page-description language for printers and graphics systems; 75 percent of all commercial documents are produced on PostScript printers. Objective Caml o Caml 2 Word-based language first used to guide the National Radio Astronomy Observatory telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Caml Caml 2-6.1 O Caml 3.00 Forth PostScript PostScript Level 2 Although mocked by "real" programmers for its limited abilities, Basic has outlived many more advanced languages, as well as the RadioShack TRS-80 computers that made it a household word. Stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Categorical Abstract Machine Language APL APL 96 Microsoft Basic The Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages. Popular for building Web sites with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools. Basic MS Basic 2.0 Visual Basic Sources: Paul Boutin; Brent Hailpern, associate director of computer science at IBM Research; The Retrocomputing Museum; Todd Proebsting, senior researcher at Microsoft; Gio Wiederhold, computer scientist, Stanford University Mother Just like half of the world's spoken tongues, most of the 2,300-plus computer programming languages are either endangered or extinct. As powerhouses C/C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Java, and other modern source codes dominate our systems, hundreds of older languages are running out of life. An ad hoc collection of engineers - electronic lexicographers, if you will - aim to save, or at least document, the lingo of classic software. They're combing the globe's 9 million developers in search of coders still fluent in these nearly forgotten lingua francas. Among the most endangered are Ada, APL, B (the predecessor of C), Lisp, Oberon, Smalltalk, and Simula. Code-raker Grady Booch, Rational Software's chief scientist, is working with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to record and, in some cases, maintain languages by writing new compilers so our ever-changing hardware can grok the code. Why bother? "They tell us about the state of software practice, the minds of their inventors, and the technical, social, and economic forces that shaped history at the time," Booch explains. "They'll provide the raw material for software archaeologists, historians, and developers to learn what worked, what was brilliant, and what was an utter failure." Here's a peek at the strongest branches of programming's family tree. For a nearly exhaustive rundown, check out the Language List at www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/Java/misc/lang_list.html. - Michael Menduno Key 1954 Year Introduced Active: thousands of users Tongues Protected: taught at universities; compilers available Endangered: usage dropping off Extinct: no known active users or up-to-date Tracing the roots of computer languages through the ages compilers Lineage continues 1954 |1955 1956 1957 | 1958 1959 1960 |1961 1962 |1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 | 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 |1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 |2000 2001 Fortran Fortran IV Fortran 90 ISO/IEC Created for the IBM 7090/94. Once one of the most widely used languagos in science and engineering. Flow-Matic Cobol Cobol 61 ANSI Cobol 74 ANSI Cobol 85 00 Cobol A Lisp-like by MIT researchage designed Papert to make programming accessible to children through graphics and simple syntax. A Lisp offshoot that's still used in introduc- tory programming classes at universities. Seymour Scheme 84 The culprit behind many Y2K bugs Also known as Common Business- Oriented Language. Uriginally B-0. Scheme Scheme IEEE Scheme R5RS One of the first English-like data-processing languages George Redin's attempt to combine the best features of Fortran, Cobol, and Algol 60. Haskell 1.0 Haskell 1.1 Object Logo Common Lisp Object System Logo Clos IPL Lisp Common Lisp ANSI Common Lisp Possibly the first list-processing language; used in Al guru Ed Feigenbau PhD Invented by John McCarthy at MIT, PL/1 ANSI PL/1 Self Self 4.0 Lisp has an unusual x made narenther The version Xerox released to the public. Algorithmic Languago, designed as a portable language for computations. Algol 68's complexity was either ahead of its time or rightfully doomed, depending on whom you ask. Still popular with Al researchers. A simple object- oriented language. Initially called Oak. Still one of the fastest-growing languages around, despite the standards feud between Sun and Microsoft. Somewhat like C++, Java allows for "write once, run anywhere" portability across the Net. PL/M NetRexx Programming Language/Microcomputers Smalltalk Smalltalk-80 The first language to show off the power of object-oriented code. Developed by Software Concepts Group, Xerox PARC, led by Alan Kay. Algol 58 Algol 68 Rex 1.00 Rex 2.00 Object Rexx Interactive A simple language object- Restructured Extended Executor An object-oriented language. The hoped-for Esperanto of the computing nal Zurich- by an based committee as a universal language, it was one of the first attempts at making software more portable. Initially called International Algebraic Language. Simula Simula 67 (A = argument, B Java Java 2 (v1.3) world. Designed oriented basic value, C= ?). language. Popular in Europe during the 70s, Simula introduced the now-standard concept of object-oriented, rather than procedural, programming. Designed by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl All-purpose version of Simula. Microsoft's answer to Java, it is a key component of the Microsoft Net platform for Web services. Eiffel Eiffel 3 Macro and text-processing language used by Unix admins to manipulate large config files programmatically, rather than editing them by h Prolog Objective-C Clu Programmation en Logique for natural- language processing. Popular for Al programs. New AWK, a pattern scanning and pro- cessing language. A hardware description language. ABC Sather 0.1 Ruby Called Cluster, it's an object-oriented academic language created to teach rigid engineering skills. yhand. Python Python 1.6 A popular language among Web site builders, it includes features missing from Perl. AWK NAWK ECMA Script Possibly the most common language today. Adds object- oriented features to C. Microsoft's version of JavaScript. Can't they share anything? :) Cmm JavaScript Tool Command Language, "tickle." The duct tape of programming (a scripting language for patching together different languages). C# Survival of the Fittest C--, a scripting language. JScript One of the most widely deployed C with Classes C+ Internet C++ Reasons a language endures, with examples of some classic tongues Hanguages today. Windows :OSes are written mostly in and C and its descendants. Concurrent C Tcl Tcl/Tk Tcl/Tk 8.1 Appeals to a wide audience C (bolstered by the popularity of Unix) ANSI C (C89) ISO C (C95) Updates C+ for the Net with a Java-like virtual machine, so code kind of computer. BCPL C Gets a job done Cobol (designed for business-report writing) Basic Combined Programming Language ADA ADA 83 ADA 95 run on any Delivers new functionality Java (runs on any hardware platform) Found in millions of Web pages. Originally dubbed LiveScript, it was renamed by Netscape marketers who licensed the name to ride Java's buzz. It has little in common with that language. A teaching language named for French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Designed by legendary Swiss programmer Niklaus Wirth for simplicity, in reaction to the complexity of Algol 68. The US Department of Defense's effort to craft a standard object-oriented language for its work. Named after Ada Lovelace, arguably the world's first computer programmer, and created by Jean Ichbiah's team at Honeywell. Fills a niche Mathematica (speeds up complex computations) Modula 3 Offers a modicum of elegance Icon (has friendly, line-oriented syntax) Used primarily for non-numeric Modula Modula 2 ISO programming Object-oriented Pascal, designed Object Pascal for simplicity. Another creation of Niklaus Wirth. Later modified by Robert Griesemer for numerical apps on supercomputers. Has a powerful user base or backer C# (developed by Microsoft for .Net) Modular Language Oberon Delphi Has a charismatic leader Perl (programmer-author Larry Wall) Pascal of programming (aka Practical Extraction and The Swiss Army Knife Report Language), used for patching together different languages. Spawned a quasi-literary culture that writes Perl haiku. Csh Perl 1.000 Perl 4.000 String-processing language for text and formula manipulation, common in text processors. Invented by David Farber, Ralph Griswold, and Ivan Polonsky at Bell Labs. Programmer's easy street - with this descendant of Snobol, there's no need to know the underlying OS. sh Ksh A general-purpose language known for its beauty and grace. Designed by Ralph Griswold to be successor to Snobol4. C-Shell, a scripting language and command- shell interpreter. Written by C programmers to make Unix command lines more like C's. Standard ML, a general-purpose language. The kitchen sink of command-line programming features for Unix, based on the original Bourne shell (aka Bourne Again Shell). Frame-based language. Bash King of the one-liners, also referred to as A Programming Language. An algebra-like I a special set of chare wnr writing complex programs as short formulas. Designed by Kenneth Iverson at Harvard. Snobol Snobol4 ML SML SML 90 SML 97 Icon Meta Language Page-description language for printers and graphics systems; 75 percent of all commercial documents are produced on PostScript printers. Objective Caml o Caml 2 Word-based language first used to guide the National Radio Astronomy Observatory telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Caml Caml 2-6.1 O Caml 3.00 Forth PostScript PostScript Level 2 Although mocked by "real" programmers for its limited abilities, Basic has outlived many more advanced languages, as well as the RadioShack TRS-80 computers that made it a household word. Stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Categorical Abstract Machine Language APL APL 96 Microsoft Basic The Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages. Popular for building Web sites with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools. Basic MS Basic 2.0 Visual Basic Sources: Paul Boutin; Brent Hailpern, associate director of computer science at IBM Research; The Retrocomputing Museum; Todd Proebsting, senior researcher at Microsoft; Gio Wiederhold, computer scientist, Stanford University Mother Just like half of the world's spoken tongues, most of the 2,300-plus computer programming languages are either endangered or extinct. As powerhouses C/C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Java, and other modern source codes dominate our systems, hundreds of older languages are running out of life. An ad hoc collection of engineers - electronic lexicographers, if you will - aim to save, or at least document, the lingo of classic software. They're combing the globe's 9 million developers in search of coders still fluent in these nearly forgotten lingua francas. Among the most endangered are Ada, APL, B (the predecessor of C), Lisp, Oberon, Smalltalk, and Simula. Code-raker Grady Booch, Rational Software's chief scientist, is working with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to record and, in some cases, maintain languages by writing new compilers so our ever-changing hardware can grok the code. Why bother? "They tell us about the state of software practice, the minds of their inventors, and the technical, social, and economic forces that shaped history at the time," Booch explains. "They'll provide the raw material for software archaeologists, historians, and developers to learn what worked, what was brilliant, and what was an utter failure." Here's a peek at the strongest branches of programming's family tree. For a nearly exhaustive rundown, check out the Language List at www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/Java/misc/lang_list.html. - Michael Menduno Key 1954 Year Introduced Active: thousands of users Tongues Protected: taught at universities; compilers available Endangered: usage dropping off Extinct: no known active users or up-to-date Tracing the roots of computer languages through the ages compilers Lineage continues 1954 |1955 1956 1957 | 1958 1959 1960 |1961 1962 |1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 | 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 |1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 |2000 2001 Fortran Fortran IV Fortran 90 ISO/IEC Created for the IBM 7090/94. Once one of the most widely used languagos in science and engineering. Flow-Matic Cobol Cobol 61 ANSI Cobol 74 ANSI Cobol 85 00 Cobol A Lisp-like by MIT researchage designed Papert to make programming accessible to children through graphics and simple syntax. A Lisp offshoot that's still used in introduc- tory programming classes at universities. Seymour Scheme 84 The culprit behind many Y2K bugs Also known as Common Business- Oriented Language. Uriginally B-0. Scheme Scheme IEEE Scheme R5RS One of the first English-like data-processing languages George Redin's attempt to combine the best features of Fortran, Cobol, and Algol 60. Haskell 1.0 Haskell 1.1 Object Logo Common Lisp Object System Logo Clos IPL Lisp Common Lisp ANSI Common Lisp Possibly the first list-processing language; used in Al guru Ed Feigenbau PhD Invented by John McCarthy at MIT, PL/1 ANSI PL/1 Self Self 4.0 Lisp has an unusual x made narenther The version Xerox released to the public. Algorithmic Languago, designed as a portable language for computations. Algol 68's complexity was either ahead of its time or rightfully doomed, depending on whom you ask. Still popular with Al researchers. A simple object- oriented language. Initially called Oak. Still one of the fastest-growing languages around, despite the standards feud between Sun and Microsoft. Somewhat like C++, Java allows for "write once, run anywhere" portability across the Net. PL/M NetRexx Programming Language/Microcomputers Smalltalk Smalltalk-80 The first language to show off the power of object-oriented code. Developed by Software Concepts Group, Xerox PARC, led by Alan Kay. Algol 58 Algol 68 Rex 1.00 Rex 2.00 Object Rexx Interactive A simple language object- Restructured Extended Executor An object-oriented language. The hoped-for Esperanto of the computing nal Zurich- by an based committee as a universal language, it was one of the first attempts at making software more portable. Initially called International Algebraic Language. Simula Simula 67 (A = argument, B Java Java 2 (v1.3) world. Designed oriented basic value, C= ?). language. Popular in Europe during the 70s, Simula introduced the now-standard concept of object-oriented, rather than procedural, programming. Designed by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl All-purpose version of Simula. Microsoft's answer to Java, it is a key component of the Microsoft Net platform for Web services. Eiffel Eiffel 3 Macro and text-processing language used by Unix admins to manipulate large config files programmatically, rather than editing them by h Prolog Objective-C Clu Programmation en Logique for natural- language processing. Popular for Al programs. New AWK, a pattern scanning and pro- cessing language. A hardware description language. ABC Sather 0.1 Ruby Called Cluster, it's an object-oriented academic language created to teach rigid engineering skills. yhand. Python Python 1.6 A popular language among Web site builders, it includes features missing from Perl. AWK NAWK ECMA Script Possibly the most common language today. Adds object- oriented features to C. Microsoft's version of JavaScript. Can't they share anything? :) Cmm JavaScript Tool Command Language, "tickle." The duct tape of programming (a scripting language for patching together different languages). C# Survival of the Fittest C--, a scripting language. JScript One of the most widely deployed C with Classes C+ Internet C++ Reasons a language endures, with examples of some classic tongues Hanguages today. Windows :OSes are written mostly in and C and its descendants. Concurrent C Tcl Tcl/Tk Tcl/Tk 8.1 Appeals to a wide audience C (bolstered by the popularity of Unix) ANSI C (C89) ISO C (C95) Updates C+ for the Net with a Java-like virtual machine, so code kind of computer. BCPL C Gets a job done Cobol (designed for business-report writing) Basic Combined Programming Language ADA ADA 83 ADA 95 run on any Delivers new functionality Java (runs on any hardware platform) Found in millions of Web pages. Originally dubbed LiveScript, it was renamed by Netscape marketers who licensed the name to ride Java's buzz. It has little in common with that language. A teaching language named for French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Designed by legendary Swiss programmer Niklaus Wirth for simplicity, in reaction to the complexity of Algol 68. The US Department of Defense's effort to craft a standard object-oriented language for its work. Named after Ada Lovelace, arguably the world's first computer programmer, and created by Jean Ichbiah's team at Honeywell. Fills a niche Mathematica (speeds up complex computations) Modula 3 Offers a modicum of elegance Icon (has friendly, line-oriented syntax) Used primarily for non-numeric Modula Modula 2 ISO programming Object-oriented Pascal, designed Object Pascal for simplicity. Another creation of Niklaus Wirth. Later modified by Robert Griesemer for numerical apps on supercomputers. Has a powerful user base or backer C# (developed by Microsoft for .Net) Modular Language Oberon Delphi Has a charismatic leader Perl (programmer-author Larry Wall) Pascal of programming (aka Practical Extraction and The Swiss Army Knife Report Language), used for patching together different languages. Spawned a quasi-literary culture that writes Perl haiku. Csh Perl 1.000 Perl 4.000 String-processing language for text and formula manipulation, common in text processors. Invented by David Farber, Ralph Griswold, and Ivan Polonsky at Bell Labs. Programmer's easy street - with this descendant of Snobol, there's no need to know the underlying OS. sh Ksh A general-purpose language known for its beauty and grace. Designed by Ralph Griswold to be successor to Snobol4. C-Shell, a scripting language and command- shell interpreter. Written by C programmers to make Unix command lines more like C's. Standard ML, a general-purpose language. The kitchen sink of command-line programming features for Unix, based on the original Bourne shell (aka Bourne Again Shell). Frame-based language. Bash King of the one-liners, also referred to as A Programming Language. An algebra-like I a special set of chare wnr writing complex programs as short formulas. Designed by Kenneth Iverson at Harvard. Snobol Snobol4 ML SML SML 90 SML 97 Icon Meta Language Page-description language for printers and graphics systems; 75 percent of all commercial documents are produced on PostScript printers. Objective Caml o Caml 2 Word-based language first used to guide the National Radio Astronomy Observatory telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Caml Caml 2-6.1 O Caml 3.00 Forth PostScript PostScript Level 2 Although mocked by "real" programmers for its limited abilities, Basic has outlived many more advanced languages, as well as the RadioShack TRS-80 computers that made it a household word. Stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Categorical Abstract Machine Language APL APL 96 Microsoft Basic The Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages. Popular for building Web sites with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools. Basic MS Basic 2.0 Visual Basic Sources: Paul Boutin; Brent Hailpern, associate director of computer science at IBM Research; The Retrocomputing Museum; Todd Proebsting, senior researcher at Microsoft; Gio Wiederhold, computer scientist, Stanford University Mother Just like half of the world's spoken tongues, most of the 2,300-plus computer programming languages are either endangered or extinct. As powerhouses C/C++, Visual Basic, Cobol, Java, and other modern source codes dominate our systems, hundreds of older languages are running out of life. An ad hoc collection of engineers - electronic lexicographers, if you will - aim to save, or at least document, the lingo of classic software. They're combing the globe's 9 million developers in search of coders still fluent in these nearly forgotten lingua francas. Among the most endangered are Ada, APL, B (the predecessor of C), Lisp, Oberon, Smalltalk, and Simula. Code-raker Grady Booch, Rational Software's chief scientist, is working with the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to record and, in some cases, maintain languages by writing new compilers so our ever-changing hardware can grok the code. Why bother? "They tell us about the state of software practice, the minds of their inventors, and the technical, social, and economic forces that shaped history at the time," Booch explains. "They'll provide the raw material for software archaeologists, historians, and developers to learn what worked, what was brilliant, and what was an utter failure." Here's a peek at the strongest branches of programming's family tree. For a nearly exhaustive rundown, check out the Language List at www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/Java/misc/lang_list.html. - Michael Menduno Key 1954 Year Introduced Active: thousands of users Tongues Protected: taught at universities; compilers available Endangered: usage dropping off Extinct: no known active users or up-to-date Tracing the roots of computer languages through the ages compilers Lineage continues 1954 |1955 1956 1957 | 1958 1959 1960 |1961 1962 |1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 | 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 |1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 |2000 2001 Fortran Fortran IV Fortran 90 ISO/IEC Created for the IBM 7090/94. Once one of the most widely used languagos in science and engineering. Flow-Matic Cobol Cobol 61 ANSI Cobol 74 ANSI Cobol 85 00 Cobol A Lisp-like by MIT researchage designed Papert to make programming accessible to children through graphics and simple syntax. A Lisp offshoot that's still used in introduc- tory programming classes at universities. Seymour Scheme 84 The culprit behind many Y2K bugs Also known as Common Business- Oriented Language. Uriginally B-0. Scheme Scheme IEEE Scheme R5RS One of the first English-like data-processing languages George Redin's attempt to combine the best features of Fortran, Cobol, and Algol 60. Haskell 1.0 Haskell 1.1 Object Logo Common Lisp Object System Logo Clos IPL Lisp Common Lisp ANSI Common Lisp Possibly the first list-processing language; used in Al guru Ed Feigenbau PhD Invented by John McCarthy at MIT, PL/1 ANSI PL/1 Self Self 4.0 Lisp has an unusual x made narenther The version Xerox released to the public. Algorithmic Languago, designed as a portable language for computations. Algol 68's complexity was either ahead of its time or rightfully doomed, depending on whom you ask. Still popular with Al researchers. A simple object- oriented language. Initially called Oak. Still one of the fastest-growing languages around, despite the standards feud between Sun and Microsoft. Somewhat like C++, Java allows for "write once, run anywhere" portability across the Net. PL/M NetRexx Programming Language/Microcomputers Smalltalk Smalltalk-80 The first language to show off the power of object-oriented code. Developed by Software Concepts Group, Xerox PARC, led by Alan Kay. Algol 58 Algol 68 Rex 1.00 Rex 2.00 Object Rexx Interactive A simple language object- Restructured Extended Executor An object-oriented language. The hoped-for Esperanto of the computing nal Zurich- by an based committee as a universal language, it was one of the first attempts at making software more portable. Initially called International Algebraic Language. Simula Simula 67 (A = argument, B Java Java 2 (v1.3) world. Designed oriented basic value, C= ?). language. Popular in Europe during the 70s, Simula introduced the now-standard concept of object-oriented, rather than procedural, programming. Designed by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl All-purpose version of Simula. Microsoft's answer to Java, it is a key component of the Microsoft Net platform for Web services. Eiffel Eiffel 3 Macro and text-processing language used by Unix admins to manipulate large config files programmatically, rather than editing them by h Prolog Objective-C Clu Programmation en Logique for natural- language processing. Popular for Al programs. New AWK, a pattern scanning and pro- cessing language. A hardware description language. ABC Sather 0.1 Ruby Called Cluster, it's an object-oriented academic language created to teach rigid engineering skills. yhand. Python Python 1.6 A popular language among Web site builders, it includes features missing from Perl. AWK NAWK ECMA Script Possibly the most common language today. Adds object- oriented features to C. Microsoft's version of JavaScript. Can't they share anything? :) Cmm JavaScript Tool Command Language, "tickle." The duct tape of programming (a scripting language for patching together different languages). C# Survival of the Fittest C--, a scripting language. JScript One of the most widely deployed C with Classes C+ Internet C++ Reasons a language endures, with examples of some classic tongues Hanguages today. Windows :OSes are written mostly in and C and its descendants. Concurrent C Tcl Tcl/Tk Tcl/Tk 8.1 Appeals to a wide audience C (bolstered by the popularity of Unix) ANSI C (C89) ISO C (C95) Updates C+ for the Net with a Java-like virtual machine, so code kind of computer. BCPL C Gets a job done Cobol (designed for business-report writing) Basic Combined Programming Language ADA ADA 83 ADA 95 run on any Delivers new functionality Java (runs on any hardware platform) Found in millions of Web pages. Originally dubbed LiveScript, it was renamed by Netscape marketers who licensed the name to ride Java's buzz. It has little in common with that language. A teaching language named for French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Designed by legendary Swiss programmer Niklaus Wirth for simplicity, in reaction to the complexity of Algol 68. The US Department of Defense's effort to craft a standard object-oriented language for its work. Named after Ada Lovelace, arguably the world's first computer programmer, and created by Jean Ichbiah's team at Honeywell. Fills a niche Mathematica (speeds up complex computations) Modula 3 Offers a modicum of elegance Icon (has friendly, line-oriented syntax) Used primarily for non-numeric Modula Modula 2 ISO programming Object-oriented Pascal, designed Object Pascal for simplicity. Another creation of Niklaus Wirth. Later modified by Robert Griesemer for numerical apps on supercomputers. Has a powerful user base or backer C# (developed by Microsoft for .Net) Modular Language Oberon Delphi Has a charismatic leader Perl (programmer-author Larry Wall) Pascal of programming (aka Practical Extraction and The Swiss Army Knife Report Language), used for patching together different languages. Spawned a quasi-literary culture that writes Perl haiku. Csh Perl 1.000 Perl 4.000 String-processing language for text and formula manipulation, common in text processors. Invented by David Farber, Ralph Griswold, and Ivan Polonsky at Bell Labs. Programmer's easy street - with this descendant of Snobol, there's no need to know the underlying OS. sh Ksh A general-purpose language known for its beauty and grace. Designed by Ralph Griswold to be successor to Snobol4. C-Shell, a scripting language and command- shell interpreter. Written by C programmers to make Unix command lines more like C's. Standard ML, a general-purpose language. The kitchen sink of command-line programming features for Unix, based on the original Bourne shell (aka Bourne Again Shell). Frame-based language. Bash King of the one-liners, also referred to as A Programming Language. An algebra-like I a special set of chare wnr writing complex programs as short formulas. Designed by Kenneth Iverson at Harvard. Snobol Snobol4 ML SML SML 90 SML 97 Icon Meta Language Page-description language for printers and graphics systems; 75 percent of all commercial documents are produced on PostScript printers. Objective Caml o Caml 2 Word-based language first used to guide the National Radio Astronomy Observatory telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. Caml Caml 2-6.1 O Caml 3.00 Forth PostScript PostScript Level 2 Although mocked by "real" programmers for its limited abilities, Basic has outlived many more advanced languages, as well as the RadioShack TRS-80 computers that made it a household word. Stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Categorical Abstract Machine Language APL APL 96 Microsoft Basic The Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages. Popular for building Web sites with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools. Basic MS Basic 2.0 Visual Basic Sources: Paul Boutin; Brent Hailpern, associate director of computer science at IBM Research; The Retrocomputing Museum; Todd Proebsting, senior researcher at Microsoft; Gio Wiederhold, computer scientist, Stanford University