Shannon Sarratt
June 24, 2014
PT1420
Unit 1, Research Assignment 1: Exploring Programming Languages
1970’s:
1. C- created by Dennis Ritchie in 1972. It was designed to be compiled using a relatively straightforward compiler, to provide low-level access to memory, to provide language constructs that map efficiently to machine instructions, and to require minimal run-time support 2. SQL- Designed by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce in 1974. It was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original quasi-relational database management system, System R, which a group at IBM San Jose Research Laboratory had developed during the 1970s. 3. Scheme- Developed by Guy L. Steele and Gerald Jay Sussman in 1975. Scheme started as an attempt to understand Carl Hewitt's Actor model, for which purpose Steele and Sussman wrote a "tiny Lisp interpreter" using Maclisp and then "added mechanisms for creating actors and sending messages. 4. Smalltalk- Designed by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, and Adelle Goldberg in 1972. The first version, known as Smalltalk-71, was created by Ingalls in a few mornings on a bet that a programming language based on the idea of message passing inspired by Simula could be implemented in "a page of code." 5. Prolog- Designed by Alain Colmerauer in 1972. Its intended field of use was natural language processing.
1980’s:
1. C++- Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1983. The motivation for creating a new language originated from Stroustrup's experience in programming for his Ph.D. thesis. Stroustrup found that Simula had features that were very helpful for large software development, but the language was too slow for practical use, while BCPL was fast but too low-level to be suitable for large software development. 2. Common Lisp- Developed by Scott Fahlman, Richard P. Gabriel, Dave Moon, Guy Steele, and Dan