The document traces the evolution of programming languages from their early days, starting with Fortran in 1957 to modern languages like Python and JavaScript. It highlights key languages, their uses, and the features that set them apart, such as COBOL for business applications and C++ for system programming. The summary concludes with the emergence of Ruby on Rails as a web application development platform.

2. Computers have required a means of instructing them to perform a specific
task. This means is known as a programming language. Computer languages
were first composed of a series of steps to wire a particular program; these
morphed into a series of steps keyed into the computer and then executed;
later these languages acquired advanced features such as logical branching and
object orientation. The computer languages of the last fifty years have come in
two stages, the first major languages and the second major languages, which
are in use today.

3. In 1957, the first of the major languages appeared in the form of FORTRAN. Its name stands
for FORmula TRANslating system. The language was designed at IBM for scientific
computing. The components were very simple, and provided the programmer with low-level
access to the computers innards.
The language is still used in aerospace , automotive industries.
1959 COBOL, business-oriented language designed. COBOL is primarily used in business,
finance, and administrative systems for companies.
In 1964, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed the original BASIC language at
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. BASIC (an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose
Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level
programminglanguages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use. Linux today
based on C

4. 1969 A high-level programming language which targets low-level hardware, most commonly
used in the programming of FPGAs. It is a rich subset of C. A class-based, single inheritance,
object-oriented language with C-style syntax. An interpreted version of C/C++, much in the
way BeanShell is an interpreted version of Java.
Pascal is a historically influential imperative and procedural programming language,
designed in 1968–69 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient
language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured
programming and data structuring Used by Skype (Pascal object).

5. 1969 A high-level programming language which targets low-level hardware, most commonly
used in the programming of FPGAs. It is a rich subset of C. A class-based, single inheritance,
object-oriented language with C-style syntax. An interpreted version of C/C++, much in the
way BeanShell is an interpreted version of Java.
Pascal is a historically influential imperative and procedural programming language,
designed in 1968–69 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient
language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured
programming and data structuring Used by Skype (Pascal object).
1983 C++ is a general-purpose programming language. It has imperative, object-
oriented and generic programming features, while also providing facilities for low-level
memory manipulation. Used by Firefox and MS.Office.

6. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting
language to make report processing easier. The languages in this family include Perl 5
and Perl 6. Used by craigslist .
1991 Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. Its design
philosophy emphasizes code readability, and its syntax allows programmers to express
concepts in fewer lines of code than would be possible in languages such as C++ or Java.
Used by YouTube and Google search.
Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, object-oriented, general-purpose programming language. It
was designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan.
According to its creator, Ruby was influenced by Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp.

7. PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as
a general-purpose programming language. Originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994.
Used by Facebook.
1995 , Java is a general-purpose computer programming language that is concurrent, class-
based, object-oriented, and specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies
as possible.
JavaScript is a high-level, dynamic, untyped, and interpreted programming language. It has
been standardized in the ECMAScript language specification. Alongside HTML and CSS, it is one
of the three essential technologies of World Wide Web content production; the majority
of websites employ it and it is supported by all modern Web browsers without plug-ins.
Ruby on Rails in 2005 : Rails combines the Ruby programming language with HTML, CSS,
andJavaScript to create a web application that runs on a web server. Because it runs on a web
server, Rails is considered a server-side, or “back end,” web application development platform
(the web browser is the “front end”)