1.7 Programming Languages

In this section, we provide brief comments on several popular programming languages (Fig. 1.5).

Fig. 1.5 Some other programming languages.

Programming language Description
Fortran Fortran (FORmula TRANslator) was developed by IBM Corporation in the mid-1950s to be used for scientific and engineering applications that require complex mathematical computations. It’s still widely used and its latest versions support object-oriented programming.
COBOL COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was developed in the late 1950s by computer manufacturers, the U.S. government and industrial computer users, based on a language developed by Grace Hopper, a career U.S. Navy officer and computer scientist. COBOL is still widely used for commercial applications that require precise and efficient manipulation of large amounts of data. Its latest version supports object-oriented programming.
Pascal Research in the 1960s resulted in structured programming—a disciplined approach to writing programs that are clearer, easier to test and debug and easier to modify than programs produced with previous techniques. The Pascal language developed by Professor Niklaus Wirth in 1971 grew out of this research. It was popular for teaching structured programming for several decades.
Ada Ada, based on Pascal, was developed under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) during the 1970s and early 1980s. The DOD wanted a single language that would fill most of its needs. The Pascal-based language was named after Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron. She’s credited with writing the world’s first computer program in the early 1800s (for the Analytical Engine mechanical computing device designed by Charles Babbage). Ada also supports object-oriented programming.
Basic Basic was developed in the 1960s at Dartmouth College to familiarize novices with programming techniques. Many of its latest versions are object oriented.
Objective-C Objective-C is an object-oriented language based on C. It was developed in the early 1980s and later acquired by NeXT, which in turn was acquired by Apple. It became the key programming language for the OS X operating system and all iOS-powered devices (such as iPods, iPhones and iPads).
Swift Swift, which was introduced in 2014, is Apple’s programming language of the future for developing iOS and OS X applications (apps). Swift is a contemporary language that includes popular programming-language features from languages such as Objective-C, Java, C#, Ruby, Python and others. In 2015, Apple released Swift 2 with new and updated features. According to the Tiobe Index, Swift has already become one of the most popular programming languages. Swift is now open source (Section 1.11.2), so it can be used on non-Apple platforms as well.
Java Sun Microsystems in 1991 funded an internal corporate research project led by James Gosling, which resulted in the C++-based object-oriented programming language called Java. A key goal of Java is to enable developers to write programs that will run on a great variety of computer systems and computer-controlled devices. This is sometimes called “write once, run anywhere.” Java is used to develop large-scale enterprise applications, to enhance the functionality of web servers (the computers that provide the content we see in our web browsers), to provide applications for consumer devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, television set-top boxes, appliances, automobiles and more) and for many other purposes. Java is also the key language for developing Android smartphone and tablet apps.
Visual Basic Microsoft’s Visual Basic language was introduced in the early 1990s to simplify the development of Microsoft Windows applications. Its latest versions support object-oriented programming.
C# Microsoft’s three primary object-oriented programming languages are C# (based on C++ and Java), Visual C++ (based on C++) and Visual Basic (based on the original Basic). C# was developed to integrate the web into computer applications, and is now widely used to develop enterprise applications and for mobile application development.
PHP PHP is an object-oriented, open-source (see Section 1.11.2) “scripting” language supported by a community of developers and used by numerous websites. PHP is platform independent—implementations exist for all major UNIX, Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems.
Python Python, another object-oriented scripting language, was released publicly in 1991. Developed by Guido van Rossum of the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam (CWI), Python draws heavily from Modula-3—a systems programming language. Python is “extensible”—it can be extended through classes and programming interfaces.
JavaScript JavaScript is the most widely used scripting language. It’s primarily used to add programmability to web pages—for example, animations and interactivity with the user. It’s provided with all major web browsers.
Ruby on Rails Ruby—created in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro Matsumoto—is an open-source, object-oriented programming language with a simple syntax that’s similar to Python. Ruby on Rails combines the scripting language Ruby with the Rails web application framework developed by the company 37Signals. Their book, Getting Real (http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php), is a must read for web developers. Many Ruby on Rails developers have reported productivity gains over other languages when developing database-intensive web applications.
Scala Scala (www.scala-lang.org/node/273)—short for “scalable language”—was designed by Martin Odersky, a professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Released in 2003, Scala uses both the object-oriented programming and functional programming paradigms and is designed to integrate with Java. Programming in Scala can reduce the amount of code in your applications significantly.
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