Programming language

1. In the 1940s the first recognizably modem, electrically powered computers were

created. Some military calculation needs were a driving force in early computer

development. At that time, computers were extremely large, slow and expensive:

advances in electronic technology in the post-war years led to the construction of

more practical electronic computers. At that time only Konrad Zuse imagined the use

of a programming language (developed eventually as Plankalkul) like those of today

for solving problems.

2. A programming language is a stylized communication technique intended to be

used for controlling the behaviour of a machine (often a computer). Like human

languages programming languages have syntactic arid semantic rules used to define

meaning.

3. The development of programming languages follows closely the development of

the physical and electronic processes used in today’s computers. At the beginning of

the XIX century, Charles Babbage designed the first computer-like machines, which

had several programs written for them (in the equivalent of assembly language) by

Ada Lovelace.

4. Shortly after in 1958, Lisp was introduced. Lisp was based on lambda calculus,

and is far more regular in its syntax than most non-Lisp derived languages. During

the 1970s, Xerox PARC developed Smalltalk, an object oriented language. Based on

the development of Smalltalk and other object oriented languages, it developed a

programming language based on the syntax of C, called C++ in 1985. Sun

Microsystems released Java in 1995 which became very popular as an introductory

programming language taught in universities. Microsoft presented the C#

programming language in 2001 which is very similar to C++ and Java. There are

many, many other languages.

5. Subsequent breakthroughs in electronic technology (transistors, integrated circuits,

and chips) drove the development of increasingly reliable and more usable

computers. The first widely used high-level programming language was FORTRAN,

developed during 1954-57 by an IBM team led by John W. Backus. It is still widely

used for numerical work, with the latest international standard released in 2004. A

Computer Languages History graphic shows a timeline from FORTRAN in 1954.

6. Programming languages have been under development for years and will remain so

for many years to come. They got their start with a list of steps to wire a computer to

perform a task. These steps eventually found their way into software and began to

acquire newer and better features. The first major languages were characterized by

the simple fact that they were intended for one purpose and one purpose only, while

the languages of today are differentiated by the way they are programmed in, as they

can be used for almost any purpose. And perhaps the languages of tomorrow will be

more natural with the invention of quantum and biological computers.

Task 1. Render the resulted text into English (about 6-7 sentences).

Task 2. Make a Computer Language history graphic.

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