Programming Language

After talking about programming languages in class, I decided I wanted to know a little more about them. My brother actually went to school for computer programming, but I never understood what he was talking about. That is why this topic interested me so much. Without programming languages we would not be able to control machines. The machines are controlled through syntax (form) and semantics (meaning). The first programming languages actually came before the computer. It was used to direct machines such as the Jacquard looms (right) and player pianos.

In the 1950s, several new programming languages developed. Some of these were the FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator), LISP (LISt Processor), and the COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language). FORTRAN specifically interested me because I talked about IBM in my previous blog, and IBM developed FORTRAN. It is popular for high-performance computing and has been used for numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, computational physics, and computational chemistry. LISP pioneered ideas in computer science, including tree data structures, automatic storage management, dynamic typing, and the self-hosting compiler. COBOL's primary domain is in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.

In the 1980s, "one important new trend in language design was an increased focus on programming for large-scale systems through the use of modules, or large-scale organizational units of code" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages). The 1990s was the internet age and scripting languages became prominant in connection with the Web. Current trends include mechanisms for adding security, alternative mechanisms for modularity, component-oriented software development, and integration with databases.