Contents  > Computers  > Programming  > History

See also:

• Computers: Programming: Languages: Comparison and Review  (113)
• Computers: Software: Operating Systems: History  (7)

A Brief History of Programming Languages A special Byte Magazine article published for Byte's 20th anniversary special report http://www.byte.com/art/9509/sec7/art19.htm

Computer Languages History Timeline chart, 1954 to today, printable; links to homes of many languages. http://www.levenez.com/lang/

Diagram of Languages Two diagrams showing how many languages are related to each other. http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/diagram.html

Historic Documents in Computer Science Original, historic first documents for many early programming languages, like language manualsa, scanned and converted to PDF form. http://www.fh-jena.de/~kleine/history/

History and Comparison of Programming Languages Papers on use history of: comments, labels, literals, parentheses. http://www.gavilan.edu/csis/languages/history.html

History and Evolution A list of computer languages and some links to compilers for these languages. http://www.scriptol.org/history.php

O'Reilly: The History of Programming Languages A poster plots over 50 programming languages on a multi-layered, color-coded timeline. http://oreilly.com/news/languageposter_0504.html

The Retrocomputing Museum Dedicated to programs that induce sensations that hover somewhere between nostalgia and nausea. The freaks, jokes, and fossils of computing history. http://www.catb.org/~esr/retro/

Visual Programming Languages: A Survey This paper by Marat Boshernitsan includes an historical overview of some of the pioneering efforts in the field. http://nitsan.org/~maratb/cs263/

Wikipedia: PL/I An encyclopedia description of PL/I history with many links to programming terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/I_programming_language

The Semicolon Wars History and critique of disagreements over language design details, citing some specific traits; by Brian Hayes. American Scientist. (July, 2006) http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/51982/