Programming languages, the language of machines, have always served an important role in recent technological advancements. As time passed, these languages have evolved together with the diverse advancements in hardware. With the development of phones came many languages specialized for iOS development such as Swift, and among these, this article aims to introduce the history of the most commonly and widely used programming languages.

In the early ages of these languages, machine code was the only way to communicate and delve into computers. Machine code is a language that only consists of binary numbers which are zeros and ones. This code allowed precise control over the computer's actions, but it was extremely difficult for humans to use. Thus, in order for humans to have easier manipulation, assembly languages were developed. These newly developed languages allowed people to have an easier time reading. However, although these languages were much less sophisticated compared to machine code, assembly language still needed its users to have a profound understanding of the structure of their devices. As a result, people demanded easier languages which gradually led to the development of higher-level programming languages. Higher-level programming languages provided people with a much easier approach to communicating with computers. A good example of this was FORTRAN, short for formula translation, which was created in the 1950s mainly for scientific and engineering calculations. FORTRAN was a good example of simplified languages which allowed users to easily perform actions without a deep understanding of the language. Soon, ALGOL, an algorithmic language, was constructed to introduce people to structured programming. Structured programming was made to enhance the experience of coding in a much more organized way. This programming was the first to introduce modern terms such as loops, conditionals, and block coding. 

After the introduction of structured programming languages came one of the most widely used languages—C. C is a programming language developed in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie. C was revolutionary as it was the first higher-level language with low-level functions. Moreover, it even allowed direct access to memory and was even able to run on many different devices. These capabilities allow it to be widely used even today. As programming developed, a new revolution was once again introduced, object-oriented programming. This allowed people to organize codes into objects. Soon came Java, developed by Sun Microsystems in 1995. Similar to C, Javaallowed simple coding. After some time, Java became one of the main languages for Android development and enterprise softwares. As the internet was introduced, the need for a language that could be used for web development increased. Due to this need, scripting languages like JavaScript, Python, and PHP were created. Javascript was a key factor in revolutionizing the field of web development by enabling interactive content through directly manipulating web browsers. Python, released in 1991, became popular for its ease of use compared to other languages such as Java and C. Its syntax was highly readable and quite straightforward. It allowed its use in many tasks like web development, data analysis, and machine learning. While these languages have been broadly applied across various fields in the past, as they developed, each language became specialized for specific functions and tasks. 

As these languages developed, the open-source movement became more and more important. The open-source movement refers to the practice of allowing the public to use and develop software or programming languages freely. This movement allowed people to freely contribute to enhancing these languages and their capabilities. One of the most successful examples is Python. Its development was led by many people around the globe who contributed to improving the language in a variety of ways. This is an innovative method since they can bolster the speed at which languages are developed. These developments range from small bug fixes to the creating entirely new functions.   As languages continue to develop simultaneously with technologies, programmers are adapting to new ways of programming. A recent development was the introduction of artificial intelligence. AIs are capable of using diverse languages including Python, Java, and all other languages covered in this article. Furthermore, technologies such as quantum computers are at the verge of completing their research phases. These advancements have now allowed even non-programmers to easily construct high-quality codes and programs. Allowing the public to delve into the realm of coding will further allow the field of programming to enhance as it becomes more accessible among many existing fields.