Top 10 Popular Programming Languages of All time and Their Creators

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There are many programming languages out there in the software world and they are still coming like Scala, Kotlin, Go, Closure etc, but the only handful of them that have managed to survive till date.

These are the ones which have contributed immensely to software development like C, C++, Java, Python, JavaScript.

Since programming language is the single most important thing in software development world as it’s often discussed, criticized and improved over the years; sometimes I feel sad when a guy using a programming language doesn’t know, who is behind that.

Though it happens less often with a popular programming language like Java, where everybody knows James Gosling as the father of Java, not every developer know who created Perl, Pascal, Lisp, or Erlang.

These thoughts motivate me to collect and share, names of programmer and designers, behind 10 of the most popular and successful programming languages.

Top 10 Programming Language and their Inventors

Here is my list of top 10 programming language and their creators.
Languages are listed in no particular order, but since I am a Java
developer and benefited a lot from Java, I have no hesitation to put it
on top of the list.

I know many C programmers will not agree as C is the longest surviving, yet going strong programming language, but this is not about ranking but about knowing and remembering their creators.

The master programmers who have made difference in the world of programming language and software development.

1) Java — James Gosling

Java is one of the most popular and successful programming languages. Dr. James Arthur Gosling has invented Java and best known as the father of the Java programming language.

Java was developed and supported earlier by Sun Microsystem and now by Oracle, after their acquisition of Sun Microsystem in January 2010.

Java is created with mission WORA, “Write Once Run Anywhere” and platform independence of Java is one of the pillars of its success in the enterprise world.

Till date, it is one of the most popular application programming languages and if you want to learn Java, then Java Fundamentals: The Java Language course is a good place to start with.

“Latte art with a tulip pattern in a cup next to a laptop” by Nolan Issac on Unsplash

2) C — Dennis Ritchie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, An American computer scientist, created the C
programming language between 1967 and 1973 at AT& T Bell Labs.

C is still very popular and used extensively in System programming. It’s older than Java but still maintains its stronghold.

By the way, Dennis Ritchie has also created world-famous UNIX operating system, with his long-time colleague Ken Thompson.

If you compare his popularity with Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, he is nowhere
but if you compare Dennis’ contribution to the software world, he has
no matching.

Every Programmer must know about Dennis Ritchie and his contribution to the programming world and if you want to learn C then you may enjoy these free Data Structure and Algorithm courses in C.

3) C++ — Bjarne Stroustrup

Bjarne Stroustrup; born 30 December 1950 in Aarhus, Denmark is a Danish
computer scientist, most notable for the creation and the development of
the widely-used C++ programming language.

The C++, as the name suggested is the next generation language at time C was popular. It comes with object-oriented programming feature which was considered phenomenal compared to the structural way of C programming.


Btw, C++ is still one of the very popular languages and used extensively
in the high-frequency trading world because of its close proximity to
native System and popular object-oriented feature.

If you want to learn C++ then you can check out these free C++ courses to start with.“Black and white shot standing and leaning against underground car park pillar with C sign” by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

4) Python — Guido van Rossum

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language, whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Its syntax is said to be clear and expressive.Python is designed by Guido van Rossum of CWI.

In the United States, Python has actually replaced Java at the academic level, nowadays students are started learning to programme using Python instead of C or Java, as was the case of the previous generation.

If you are still not sure whether to use Python or Java to start with programming, this infographic may help you.

Python is used extensively in web application development, there are
lots of python based web framework out there, software development and
information security.

Python is also used extensively by tech giants like Google, Yahoo, and Spotify, and if you want to learn Python then Python: Getting Started by Bo Milanovich is one of the best course to start with.

Btw, if you want more choices you can also check out this list of best Python courses for both beginners and intermediate programmers.

5) PHP — Rasmus Lerdorf

No matter how much you hate PHP, you just can’t ignore the fact that half
of the internet is running on this wonderful internet language. PHP was
originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995.

The main implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group and serves as the formal reference to the PHP language.


That time, PHP was a competitor to Microsoft’s Active Server Pages
(ASP) server-side script engine and similar languages e.g. Java Server
Pages (JSP), but gradually received better acceptance and is now
installed on more than 20 million Web sites and 1 million Web servers.


It is also open source and used by internet giants like Facebook,
Wikipedia, Wordpress, and Joomla. PHP is used extensively to build
dynamic web pages and server-side development.

Btw, If you want to learn PHP then here is a list of some free PHP and MySQL courses to start with.

Sorry, I forgot to tell you the full form of PHP, any guess? It’s Personal Home Page :)

6) Perl — Larry Wall

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming
language. designed and developed by Larry Wall in the mid-1980’s. Perl
rose to fame because of its excellent text processing capability.

It is still the main language to develop reports, scripts on UNIX
systems. Perl is known for parsing and processing large text files and
its used in CGI, database applications, network programming, and
graphics programming.

Perl is also used extensively by internet companies like IMDB, Amazon, and Priceline.

For Java developers, adding Perl or Python in their portfolio is a good
addition because you often need a scripting language to do ad-hoc tasks
for maintenance and support purpose

7) JavaScript — Brendan Eich

If you ask me, which language is the winner in last 5 to 10 years, I would
say JavaScript. It has clearly dominated the client side scripting
space in recent past with libraries like jQuery and now moving to Server side development with libraries like node.js.

JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions, designed by Brendan Eich and developed by Netscape Communications Corporation.

JavaScript is used extensively for client-side scripting, validation, animation, event capturing, form submission and other common tasks. It runs inside the browser and used by almost all websites e.g. Gmail, Mozilla Firefox etc.

I strongly recommend to learn JavaScript to all programmers and Introduction to JavaScript & jQuery is the best course to start with

But, if you want to start with some free resources, here is a list of some free JavaScript courses to start with.

8) Ruby — Yukihiro Matsumoto

Ruby was first designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro “Matz”
Matsumoto in Japan. Its fun working with Ruby and if you tried Ruby with
Rails you know what I mean.

Ruby is influenced by Perl, Ada, Lisp, and Smalltalk and designed for productive and enjoyable programming.

Ruby is mostly used for web application development and used by major sites like Twitter, Hulu, and Groupon.

If you want to learn Ruby then Ruby Fundamentals by Alex Korban Course is the best place to start with. But if you are looking for some free stuff then here is a list of free Ruby Programming courses to start with.

9) Lisp — John McCarthy

John McCarthy, second oldest high-level programming language. Lisp stands for List Processor.

I have never tried Lisp but its said to be the father of functional programming language e.g. Haskell, Erlang or Scala. It is mostly used for AL development and air defense system.

10) Pascal — Niklaus Wirth

Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language,
designed in 1968–1969 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small
and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices
using structured programming and data structuring.

That’s all about top 10 programming languages and their creators. They have made a huge difference in the programming world and without their contribution, we would not be here.

Some of them are here with us and some of them has left us for a better
place, let’s remember them for their contribution to our programming
world.

Originally published at javarevisited.blogspot.com on April 15, 2018.