The Past, Present and Future of Computer Languages

One of the earliest mentions and developments of computer languages occurred roughly 78 years ago in the 1940s.
During this time, Plankal, Fortran, COBOL and BASIC were developed. These are listed below, with relevant information.

Plankakul:

• First brought to the public eye in 1948
• Later published in complete paper in 1972
• First compiler started usage in 1998
  (Dalakov, n.d.a)
• Became inferior as new languages emerged in 1950s & 60s, by time of unrestricted release.
  (Raik-Allen, 2013)

Fortran:

• Released commercially in 1957
• Devveloped for the IBM 704*
  Specifically for Mathematicians and Scientists
• Remained prominent programming language for 3+ decades
  (Dalakov, n.d.a)

COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language):

• Created half a decade after Fortran
  -Further progressed in 1959 by mathematician and U.S. Navy officer Grace Hopper
  (Encyclopedia Britannica,2018)
• Heavy usage in private sectors
  E.g. Fedral Agencies
• Government and Business used primarily for data processing
  (National Museum of American History, n.d.)

BASIC (Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code):

• Created in 1960s
• Used to teach undergraduates at Dartmouth college
• Easier to learn than Fortran
  Lack of complexity contributed to prominence, especially with personal computers becoming more common in the 1970s
  (Bellis,2017)

With the current technological advancements, it is important that the computer languages are able to work on a multitude
of devices to serve almost every industry. Java and C/C++ are two of the most commonly used today:

JAVA:

• Considered 'higher-level'
• Runs on Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
  (Hass,2018)
• Able to run practically any Oerating System and Hardware
  IOS, Windows, etc.
  Laptops, desktops,tablets,mobile phones,etc.
  (Smith,2016)
• better for less hardware intensive applications
  (Marsh,n.d)

C/C++:

• Runs faster than JAVA, but this makes it more resource demanding
• Used primarily for game & application development
  (Marsh,n.d)
• runs faster as code is read and converted line by line as the program runs
  (Hass,2018)

Predicting how computer languages will develop is incredibly difficult, although we can see where they may develop based on todays needs.
Simon P. Jones (TechRepublic,2017) suggests adding 'parallel programing' to today's functional languages for the following resons:

• decreasing chances of clashing code
• better problem solving capabilities
• operates over two computers

Developers should also consider making languages easier to access and write on tablets and mobile devices, as previously some languages
have not been user-friendly on phones and laptops (Wilson,2016).Developers should also aim to keep languages as simple as possible.
this would allow their products to be more user-friendly (Smith,2016)

Languages in order: Plankakul, Fortran, COBOL, BASIC, JAVA, C/C++.