Although hundreds of high-level languages have been developed, only a few have achieved broad acceptance other than those we've discussed.
Fortran
IBM Corporation developed Fortran (FORmula TRANslator) in the mid-1950s to create scientific and engineering applications that require complex mathematical computations. Fortran is still widely used.
COBOL
COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was developed in 1959 by a group of computer manufacturers in conjunction with government and industrial computer users. COBOL is used primarily for commercial applications that require the precise and efficient manipulation of large amounts of data. Much of today's business software is still programmed in COBOL.
Pascal
During the 1960s, many large software-development efforts encountered severe difficulties. People began to realize that software development was a far more complex activity than they had imagined. Research activity resulted in the evolution of structured programminga disciplined approach to creating programs that are clear, demonstrably correct and easy to modify. One of the results of this research was the development of the Pascal programming language by Professor Niklaus Wirth in 1971. Pascal, named after the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, was designed for teaching structured programming in academic environments and rapidly became the preferred introductory programming language in most colleges. Unfortunately, the language lacked many features needed to make it useful in commercial, industrial and government applications. By contrast, C, which also arose from research on structured programming, did not have the limitations of Pascal, and programmers quickly adopted it instead.
Ada
The Ada programming language was developed under the sponsorship of the U. S. Department of Defense (DOD) through the early 1980s. DOD wanted a single language that would meet its needs. The language was named after Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Lady Lovelace is generally credited with writing the world's first computer program, in the early 1800s (for the Analytical Engine mechanical computing device designed by Charles Babbage). An important capability of Ada is multitasking, which allows programmers to specify that many activities are to occur in parallel. As we will see in Chapter 15, C# offers a similar capability, called multithreading.
Preface
Index
Introduction to Computers, the Internet and Visual C#
Introduction to the Visual C# 2005 Express Edition IDE
Introduction to C# Applications
Introduction to Classes and Objects
Control Statements: Part 1
Control Statements: Part 2
Methods: A Deeper Look
Arrays
Classes and Objects: A Deeper Look
Object-Oriented Programming: Inheritance
Polymorphism, Interfaces & Operator Overloading
Exception Handling
Graphical User Interface Concepts: Part 1
Graphical User Interface Concepts: Part 2
Multithreading
Strings, Characters and Regular Expressions
Graphics and Multimedia
Files and Streams
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Database, SQL and ADO.NET
ASP.NET 2.0, Web Forms and Web Controls
Web Services
Networking: Streams-Based Sockets and Datagrams
Searching and Sorting
Data Structures
Generics
Collections
Appendix A. Operator Precedence Chart
Appendix B. Number Systems
Appendix C. Using the Visual Studio 2005 Debugger
Appendix D. ASCII Character Set
Appendix E. Unicode®
Appendix F. Introduction to XHTML: Part 1
Appendix G. Introduction to XHTML: Part 2
Appendix H. HTML/XHTML Special Characters
Appendix I. HTML/XHTML Colors
Appendix J. ATM Case Study Code
Appendix K. UML 2: Additional Diagram Types
Appendix L. Simple Types
Index