Computers need programming languages to function. That’s just a simple fact of life. However, these languages didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. They were developed by people for explicit purposes.

For the rest of the history of modern programming languages -- because C was really just the beginning! -- check out the infographic below. You can click it to zoom in.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about innovation, the future of work and remote work. The future of programming and AI is more nuanced than headlines ...

More programmers and engineers are adopting a practice known as “vibe coding,” a technique where the coder tells an AI assistant what to build based on what they feel will work. Clarence Huang, vice ...

I was 5 or 6 when I got my first sense of the joys of computer programming. This was in the early 1980s, when few people had a computer. One day, my dad brought home a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, one of the ...

Although perhaps not as much of a household name as other pioneers of last century’s rapid evolution of computer hardware and the software running on them, Niklaus Wirth’s contributions puts him right ...

If you were a Windows programmer in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most likely you had a copy of Programming Windows by Charles Petzold on your bookshelf. The book, in its many editions, was so ...