Top 10 Oldest Programming Languages That Are Highly in Use in 2023

The article enlists some of the oldest programming languages that are presently in use

A programming language is a way to communicate with computers. Programming languages are made up of a collection of rules that allow string values to be converted into various ways of generating machine code, or, in the case of visual programming languages, graphical elements. Choosing the right programming language for technology development is an essential part of this journey. Presently we can see numerous recently launched and fastest-growing top programming languages but still, developers prefer to use the oldest programming languages to solve their purpose. There are a wide variety of the oldest programming languages to use in 2023 and developers employ them on a daily basis. They appreciate utilizing some of the older programming languages that are offered to them to get some critical solutions. Here the article will discuss the top 10 oldest programming languages that are highly in use in 2023 and worth learning. 

Fortran

Year Released: 1957 

Fortran, formerly known as FORTRAN, is the oldest programming language still in use. It was initially commercially distributed in 1957. The first version of the programming language was created by a group of programmers at IBM under the direction of John Backus. Backus made a suggestion to his bosses at IBM in late 1953 to create a more useful substitute for assembly language for programming their IBM 704 mainframe computer. Fortran was made available to the general public three years after it was made usable one year later. Fortran swiftly transformed the field of computer programming, and it has been in use ever since for the past 60 years.

Lisp

Year Released: 1958

The second-oldest high-level programming language that is still widely used today is Lisp. John McCarthy, a renowned computer scientist and one of the pioneers of the field of artificial intelligence, created Lisp.

SQL

Year Released: 1974

Next on the list is the SQL programming language. It was created in 1974 by IBM employees Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce. One of the earliest commercial programming languages was this one. The SQL programming language is currently regarded as the industry standard for communicating with relational databases.

COBOL

Year Released: 1974

The Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL) has been created by the Conference on Data System Languages (CODASYL) in 1959, providing relief from the rising cost of programming concerns. COBOL is widely used in business, finance, and administrative systems for organizations and governments.

Ada

Year Released: 1974

Ada was developed in the early 1980s by Jean Ichbiah and his team at CII-Honeywell-Bull in France under contract with the United States Department of Defense. The structured, statically typed, imperative, the object-oriented high-level programming language has some roots in earlier languages like Pascal. Ada was created between 1977 and 1983 with the intention of replacing all of the Department of Defense's existing programming languages at the time. Even today, very large and important software systems are still developed using Ada.

Smalltalk

Year Released: 1972

Smalltalk is an early object-oriented programming language developed by a team led by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC. It was developed in part for educational purposes, specifically for constructionist learning at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC (in which students build mental models to comprehend the world around them). Smalltalk wasn't commercially available until 1980 as Smalltalk-80. Smalltalk was previously only supported by Xerox Alto computers. Even though there are more sophisticated object-oriented programming languages, Smalltalk is still one of the most cherished ones.

BASIC

Year Released: 1964

All of the programming languages mentioned here have altered the computer industry, but BASIC may have been the most revolutionary. After its 1964 release, BASIC made computer programming and use access to the general public, particularly undergraduates studying subjects besides science and mathematics.

Pascal

Pascal was brought into existence in order to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring. Introduced by Niklaus Wirth in 1970, Pascal serves to be no less than a blessing for those interested in serious programming skills.

Year Released: 1970

With the use of structured programming and data organization, Pascal was developed to promote effective programming habits. Pascal, first made available by Niklaus Wirth in 1970, is nothing short of a blessing for anyone looking to develop their programming skills to a high level.

MATLAB

Year Released: 1984

Millions of people with backgrounds in engineering, science, and economics use MATLAB, a program that MathWorks created in the early 1980s that is primarily meant for numerical computing. MATLAB, which started as a straightforward interactive matrix calculator, now allows users to manipulate matrices, plot functions, and data, apply algorithms, build user interfaces, and connect with other programming languages.