Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Programming
language
Description
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 Ada 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.
C
C was developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories. It initially
became widely known as the UNIX operating system's development language. Today,
most of the code for general-purpose operating systems is written in C or C++.
C++
C++, which is based on C, was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in the early 1980s at
Bell Laboratories. C++ provides several features that “spruce up” the C language, but
more important, it provides capabilities for object-oriented programming.
Objective-C
Objective-C is another 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 has
become the key programming language for the OS X operating system and all iOS-
powered devices (such as iPods, iPhones and iPads).
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.
Visual C#
Microsoft's three object-oriented primary programming languages are Visual Basic
(based on the original Basic), Visual C++ (based on C++) and Visual C# (based on
C++ and Java, and developed for integrating the Internet and the web into computer
applications).
PHP
PHP, an object-oriented, open-source scripting language supported by a community
of users and developers, is used by millions of websites. PHP is platform indepen-
dent—implementations exist for all major UNIX, Linux, Mac and Windows operat-
ing systems. PHP also supports many databases, including the popular open-source
MySQL.
Perl
Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language), one of the most widely used object-
oriented scripting languages for web programming, was developed in 1987 by Larry
Wall. It features rich text-processing capabilities.
Python
Python, another object-oriented scripting language, was released publicly in 1991.
Developed by Guido van Rossum of the National Research Institute for Mathemat-
ics and Computer Science in Amsterdam (CWI), Python draws heavily from Mod-
ula-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
dynamic behavior to web pages—for example, animations and improved interactiv-
ity with the user. It's provided with all major web browsers.
Fig. 1.5
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Some other programming languages. (Part 2 of 3.)
