Programming languages that changed the world

If you’re not familiar with computer hardware, it may come as a shock to discover that every electronic device in your home is operating entirely on an endless stream of zeroes and ones.

Computers, smartphones, apps and web browsers don’t understand languages. They only recognise the binary state of being either on or off.

However, since it would take a long time to code every on-screen pixel and app/webpage interaction using zeroes and ones, programming languages translate our commands into binary for us.

This allows humans to issue instructions in a manner which makes sense to us, while enabling electronic devices to interpret what they’re being asked to do.

As such, programming languages represent an essential bridge between man and machine – and some have been more influential than others…

For’ the many, not the few

Few people have heard of Fortran, yet IBM’s 1950s creation was the first successful high-level language, predating 1960s rivals like LIPS and COBOL (which is still in use today).

The first coding language many British consumers encountered was Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, better known as BASIC, and developed in the mid-1960s.

The 1980s home computing boom brought BASIC into our homes, introducing the ability to create your own software via a language of PEEKs and POKEs, GOTOs and GOSUBs.

BASIC is several years older than C, the AT&T-developed tool which became the foundation stone for Unix before evolving into the more complex C++. Both C and C++ are widely used today.

Many technologies we tend to think of as modern originated in the fast-moving 1990s, which was a particularly fertile period for the creation of new programming languages.

The Nineties saw the arrival of Python (used to create Dropbox), Ruby (used to create GitHub), JavaScript (used to create Netflix) and PHP (used to create Facebook).

The latter became a cornerstone of the iconic open-source LAMP stack – Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP – underpinning many of the websites and apps we use nowadays.

The LAMP stack powers Wikipedia, Tumblr, WordPress and Slack, to name but four platforms.

Popularity contest

There is an argument that JavaScript remains the most important programming language in the modern world.

It drives everything from interactive web content (Duolingo) to apps (Uber), and it’s a central plank of modern webpages, including our very own BroadbandDeals.co.uk.

However, in a market of over eight thousand programming languages, advocates of other languages could mount compelling cases of their own.

A recent study concluded that Python is the most widely used language worldwide, outstripping JavaScript and the unrelated Java language (in third and second place respectively).

Python underpins the data science and machine learning libraries behind much of today’s generative AI technology, while it’s also relatively easy for coders to get to grips with.

It’s been utilised to develop apps including Instagram, Spotify, Disqus and Reddit, while Google relies on Python to run many of its web services and critical systems.

While these services would probably still exist without Python, they’re unlikely to have evolved in the same way, just as JavaScript has become indispensable to web developers.

This reflects the critical importance of programming languages in creating the digital world we take for granted, enabling developers and designers to translate bright ideas into zeroes and ones.