Top Programming Languages You Should Learn Today

This section contains brief descriptions of several computer languages, with pointers to their standard versions and current Web pages added for further information. Each of these languages is supported by texts and professional references as well as compilers and interpreters.

ADA

ADA was designed during the late 1970s in a collaborative effort sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. Its purpose was to provide a common high-level language in which systems programs could be designed and implemented, with special features that support concurrency, data abstraction, and software reuse. ADA was first implemented in the early 1980s and was first standardized in 1983 as a U.S. military standard. Since then, a variety of ADA implementations have emerged and many new features have been added. The current international ADA standard definition is found in ANSI/ISO/IEC 8652-1995.

C

The language C was designed in 1969 as a systems programming language to support programmers who were implementing the Unix operating system. Its usage grew rapidly alongside that of Unix itself and today is probably the most widely used systems programming language. C was standardized in 1990, and its current standard version is ANSI/ISO 9899-1990.

C is also used widely in the sciences and other programming application areas. It is a high-level imperative language with extensive function libraries and unusually efficient implementations. C compilers run on most modern computers and operating systems. For more information about C, consult the Usenet news group comp.lang.c or the following Web page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html.

C++

C++ is a high-performance, general-purpose programming language. It was developed in the early 1980s by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs as an extension of the C programming language. C++ is based on the C language but includes several additional features, such as classes, objects, templates, and exception handling.

C++ is a powerful, multi-paradigm language that can be used for a wide range of tasks, including system/application software, game development, driver and client-server applications. It is widely used in the areas of computer graphics, computer games, simulation, and enterprise software.

C++ is a compiled language, which means that the source code is transformed into machine code by a compiler before being executed. This allows for faster execution times compared to interpreted languages such as Python and JavaScript.

C++ is also an object-oriented language, which allows for the creation of objects and classes, and the use of encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. C++ also supports procedural, generic and functional programming. C++ has a large number of libraries available, such as the Standard Template Library (STL), which provides a wide range of useful data structures and algorithms.

C++ is widely used in industry and academia, and has a large user community. There are many libraries, frameworks, and tools available to support the development of C++ applications, and a large number of books, articles, and tutorials available to help developers learn the language.

COBOL

COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) is a high-level programming language that is specifically designed for business applications such as finance, accounting, and inventory management. It was developed in the late 1950s and was one of the first programming languages to be widely used in commercial applications.

COBOL is known for its English-like syntax, which makes it relatively easy to read and understand, even for people with little or no programming experience. It is designed to be highly structured and modular, which helps to make the code more readable and maintainable. It also supports data manipulation and file handling operations, which are essential for business applications.

COBOL is primarily used for developing mainframe applications, which are large-scale, complex systems that run on large computers. It is also used for legacy systems that have been in use for many years and are still in operation today.

COBOL is a compiled language, which means that the source code is transformed into machine code by a compiler before being executed. COBOL programs are usually executed on mainframe computers, but it can be also used on other platforms with the help of a COBOL compiler.

Despite its age, COBOL remains widely used today in various industries, such as banking, finance, insurance, and government, because of its robustness, reliability, and ability to handle large amounts of data. However, in recent years the usage of COBOL is decreasing as companies are migrating to new technologies such as Java, C# and other languages.

EIFFEL

Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language developed by Bertrand Meyer in the 1980s. It is a high-level, general-purpose language that is designed for the development of high-quality, maintainable, and efficient software. Eiffel is known for its strong support for software engineering principles, such as design by contract and separation of concerns, which help to make the code more robust and less prone to errors.

Eiffel is a compiled language, which means that the source code is transformed into machine code by a compiler before being executed. The Eiffel compiler also includes a number of advanced features, such as automatic memory management, that help to make the code more efficient and less prone to errors.

One of the key features of Eiffel is its support for design by contract, which is a technique for specifying the expected behavior of a program in terms of contracts between its components. This helps to ensure that the program behaves correctly and is less prone to errors.

Eiffel also supports the concept of separation of concerns, which is a technique for breaking down a complex system into smaller, more manageable components that can be developed and tested independently.

Eiffel has been used in a variety of applications, including financial systems, medical systems, and other large-scale, complex systems. EiffelStudio is the most popular development environment for Eiffel, it's a complete integrated development environment (IDE) that includes a compiler, a code editor, a debugger and other tools.

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that is used to encode documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is a flexible and extensible format that can be used to store, transmit, and share structured data across different systems and applications.

XML is a markup language, similar to HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), which is used to create web pages. However, while HTML is designed to display data in a specific way, XML is designed to describe data, and its structure is defined by the user.

XML documents are made up of elements, which are enclosed in angle brackets (< and >), and have a start tag and an end tag. Elements can contain other elements, as well as text and attributes. Attributes are used to provide additional information about elements, such as their value or meaning.

XML is platform-independent, which means that it can be used on any operating system or device. It can also be used with a wide range of programming languages, including C#, Java, and Python, and it is supported by many different software programs, including web browsers, databases, and office software.

XML is commonly used for storing and sharing data over the internet and in various applications, such as RSS feeds, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) web services, and office document formats, such as Microsoft Office's .docx and .xlsx file format. It is used in a wide range of industries and applications, including healthcare, finance, logistics, and e-commerce.

FORTRAN

FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) is a high-level, general-purpose programming language that was developed in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications. It is particularly well-suited for numerical and scientific computing, as well as for applications that require complex mathematical operations.

FORTRAN is a compiled language, which means that the source code is transformed into machine code by a compiler before being executed. FORTRAN compilers are available for a wide range of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and macOS, and the language has been standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

FORTRAN has a number of features that make it well-suited for scientific and engineering applications, including support for complex mathematical operations, arrays, and subroutines. It also has a number of built-in functions for performing common mathematical operations, such as trigonometric functions and matrix operations.

FORTRAN is still widely used in scientific and engineering applications such as simulations, weather forecasting, aerodynamics, quantum chemistry, and computational fluid dynamics. The latest standard of FORTRAN is FORTRAN 2018, which includes modern features such as object-oriented programming, coarrays and interoperability with C.

Although FORTRAN is not as popular as it used to be, it's still used in the areas where high-performance and numerical accuracy is required, and a large number of scientific and engineering software packages are still written in FORTRAN, such as numerical libraries, simulation software and weather forecasting models.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

HTML is the standard language for preparing documents to be published on the World Wide Web. It is nonproprietary, and it can be created and processed by a wide range of word and document processing tools.HTML uses tags such as < h1 > and < /h1 >to structure text into headings, paragraphs, lists, hypertext links, graphics, sound, and video. HTML was standardized by ISO in the year 2000 as ISO-15445. More information can be found at the Web site: http://www.w3c.org/MarkUp.

Java

Java was designed in the early 1990s by a team at Sun Microsystems headed by James Gosling. Designed to facilitate interactive programming on the Internet and World Wide Web, Java was rapidly disseminated among systems programmers at major companies in the technology industry. Java programs, or applets, can be embedded in appliances and HTML documents, providing interactive executable programs for users on the Web.

LaTeX

LISP

ML

OpenGL

PASCAL

PERL

PostScript and PDF

PROLOG

SCHEME

Tcl/Tk

X Windows

Python

etc.

Here's a summary of some of the most popular programming languages and their characteristics in table format:

It's worth noting that this list is not exhaustive, and there are many other programming languages available, each with its own unique characteristics and use cases. This is a general overview of some of the most popular programming languages that are widely used today.