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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| History of programming languages | 3/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:17:21.154089+00:00 | kb-cron |
The rapid growth of the Internet in the mid-1990s was the next major historic event in programming languages. By opening up a radically new platform for computer systems, the Internet created an opportunity for new languages to be adopted. The JavaScript language rose rapidly to popularity because of its early integration with the Netscape Navigator web browser. Various other scripting languages achieved widespread use in developing customized applications for web servers such as PHP. The 1990s saw no fundamental novelty in imperative programming languages, but much recombining and maturing of old ideas. This era began the spread of functional programming languages. A big driving philosophy was programmer productivity. Many rapid application development (RAD) languages emerged, which usually came with an integrated development environment (IDE), garbage collection, and were descendants of older languages. All such languages were object-oriented. These included Object Pascal, Objective Caml (renamed OCaml), Visual Basic, and Java. Java received much attention. More radical and innovative than the RAD languages were the new scripting languages. These did not directly descend from other languages and featured new syntaxes and more liberal incorporation of features. Many consider these scripting languages to be more productive than even the RAD languages, but often because of choices that make small programs simpler but large programs more difficult to write and maintain. Nevertheless, scripting languages came to be the most prominent ones used relative to the Web. Some programming languages included other languages in their distribution to save the development time. For example, both of Python and Ruby included Tcl to support graphical user interface (GUI) programming through libraries like Tkinter. Some notable languages that were developed in this period include:
== 2000s: programming paradigms ==
Programming language evolution continues, and more programming paradigms are used in production. Some of the trends have included:
Increasing support for functional programming in mainstream languages used commercially, including purely functional programming for making code easier to reason about and to parallelize (at both micro- and macro- levels) Constructs to support concurrent and distributed programming. Mechanisms for adding security and reliability verification to the language: extended static checking, dependent typing, information flow control, static thread safety. Alternative mechanisms for composability and modularity: mixins, traits, typeclasses, delegates, aspects. Component-oriented software development. More interest in visual programming languages like Scratch and LabVIEW Metaprogramming, reflective programming (reflection), or access to the abstract syntax tree Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) allowing developers to insert code in another module or class at "join points" Domain-specific languages and code generation XML for graphical interface (XUL, Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML)) Big Tech companies introduced multiple new programming languages that are designed to serve their needs. for example:
Microsoft introduced C# and F# Google introduced Go Some notable languages developed during this period include:
== 2010s: the Mobile age ==
Programming language evolution continues with the rise of new programming domains.
Increased interest in distribution and mobility. Integration with databases, including XML and relational databases. Open source as a developmental philosophy for languages, including the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and languages such as PHP, Python, Ruby, and Scala. Massively parallel languages for graphics processing units (GPUs) and supercomputer arrays, including OpenCL Early research into quantum computing and quantum programming languages Multiple new programming languages tried to provide a modern replacement for the C programming language. Many new programming languages are influenced by the popular dynamic languages and promised adding type safety without decreasing the productivity. Many new programming languages uses LLVM in their implementation. Many Big Tech companies continued introducing new programming languages that are designed to serve their needs and provides first-class support for their platforms. for example:
Microsoft introduced TypeScript, Q# and Bosque Google introduced Dart Apple introduced Swift. Meta introduced Hack. Some notable languages developed during this period include:
Other new programming languages include Elm, Ballerina, Red, Crystal, V (Vlang), Reason.
== 2020s: Current trends ==
The development of new programming languages continues. Some new languages try to provide the advantages of a known language like C++ (versatile and fast) while adding safety or reducing complexity. Other new languages try to bring ease of use as provided by Python while adding performance as a priority. Some notable new programming languages include:
2021 – Power Fx 2022 – Carbon 2023 – Mojo
== Key figures ==
Some key people who helped develop programming languages: