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• A programming language is a formal notation system used for writing computer programs and software applications.

Milestones in Programming Languages

• In 1843, Ada Lovelace created the first machine algorithm, theorizing that numbers could represent other things and designing a language capable of giving computer instructions.
• In the 1940s, Konrad Zuse developed Plankalkül, a language for expressing computations for the Z4 computer, which means program calculus.
• Assembly language originated in 1949, when Kathleen Booth wrote the first assembly language for simplifying machine code for writing processor instructions.
• Shortcode was implemented in 1949 by William Schmitt to improve BINAC and UNIVAC computer operations.
• Autocode was created in 1952 by Alick Glennie for the Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester, referring to a set of programming languages and considered the first compiled language, which required a compiler to translate to machine code.
• Fortran, created in 1957 by John Backus for formula translation, is still used for supercomputers and scientific/mathematical computation.
• ALGOL appeared in 1958, created by American and European computer scientists, becoming the origin for other computer languages like Pascal, Java, C, and C++.
• LISP originated in 1958, created by John McCarthy for AI applications, making it one of the oldest programming languages still in use today.
• COBOL, developed in 1959 by Dr. Grace Murray Hopper for business computer programs, is still widely used in today’s banking systems and used by over 100 million people.
• In 1964, BASIC language was created for beginners by Dartmouth College students, with Bill Gates and Paul Allen furthering its development into Microsoft's first commercially successful product.
• Pascal was developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth and endorsed by Apple for its streamlined and straightforward process.
• The C language, developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Telephone Laboratories, is recommended for creating embedded system drivers and applications; C# Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, and Python are all derived from C.
• SQL was developed in 1972 by Raymond Boyce and Donald Chamberlain for modifying, viewing, and altering database information, originally named SEQUEL.
• C++ appeared in 1983 from Bjarne Stroustrup, a C programmer, who modified the C language, adding features such as templates, classes, and virtual functions
• Objective-C was created in 1983 by Brad Cox and Tom Love, which became the primary programming language for Apple's iOS, macOS, and iPad operating systems.
• Python was founded in 1991 by Guido Van Rossum as a support language for software developers for build control and management, testing, and other applications; plus, it is a general-purpose, high-level language.
• Visual Basic was created in 1991 by Microsoft, allowing users to drag and drop code sections simultaneously and choose from various options via drop-down menus.
• Java was created in 1995 by James Gosling as a software project for interactive TV and is a multi-platform, object-oriented, and network-centric language that's known for coding web applications.
• JavaScript was created in 1995 by Brendan Eich and is primarily used as a scripting language for web development, PDF documents, and desktop widgets.
• PHP was developed in 1995 by Rasmus Lerdorf to build and maintain web pages and server-side development; Facebook, Wikipedia, and WordPress use PHP.

Programming Domains

• The scientific application domain used the first digital computers from the late 1940s to early 1950s, requiring languages like Fortran for its simple data structures and floating-point arithmetic computations.
• The business application domain started using computers in the 1950s with special computers and languages; its first successful high-level language was COBOL, with the initial version from 1960.
• The artificial intelligence domain is characterized by symbolic rather than numeric computations, leading to LISP as the first widely used programming language before 1990; Python has been used more recently in AI applications.
• The WWW is supported by languages ranging from HTML to Java, with dynamic content requiring scripting languages like JavaScript or PHP.

Programming Environments

• Consists of tools in software development like a file system, a text editor, a linker, and a compiler, which are accessed through a uniform user interface.
• Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a redefined and optimized code editor for building and debugging web and cloud applications, it also supports Javascript, Typescript, Node.js, Java, Python, C++, C#, PHP, and .NET).
• NetBeans provides comprehensive support for JDK 7 technologies and Java enhancements; plus, JavaScript, Ruby, and PHP.
• Arduino IDE contains a text editor for coding, a message area, a text console, a toolbar, and a series of menus, connecting to the Arduino board to upload programs and communicate with them.
• Blockly is a visual programming editor made by Google using drag-and-drop blocks for coding and empowering coding education programs.

Readability

• An important criterion for assessing a programming language is the ease with which programs can be read and understood.
• Simplicity in a programming language impacts its readability, with feature multiplicity, operator overloading, and oversimplicity, are readability problems.
• Orthogonality is the ability to change one thing without unseen effects on other things in the program.
• Data Types offer a significant aid to readability.
• Syntax Design impacts the readability of programs.

Writability

• Is the measure of how easily a language can be used to create programs
• Affecting characteristics are simplicity and orthogonality, and Expressivity

Realibility

• It is met if a program performs to its specifications under all conditions.

Syntax

• Syntax and semantics study programming languages
• Syntax and semantics make up a language along with the alphabet, set of symbols used to build words, and lexis or a dictionary.
• Natural language is a set of rules that determines if a certain string of words forms a valid sentence.
• Programming language is the form of its expressions, statements, and program units; syntax defines the meaning of the various combinations of symbols used in programming.
• Syntax components are keywords, operators, punctuation, and identifiers.
• BNF, Backus-Naur Form, is a natural notation for describing syntax and a metalanguage for programming language which allows users to write a detailed description of a language's grammar.
• BNF rules can be created by combining terminals and nonterminals and specifying grammar.
• Python has a grammar defined as a set of BNF rules to validate the syntax of code.
• Grammar includes symbols, nonterminal variables, and terminals.
• Python has a set of custom symbols with assigned names, it also uses different forms of brackets with different instructions.