Who would have believed that the internet would eventually become a necessity for everyone? It’s the most significant invention and everybody relies on it. In the end, it’s thanks to the internet that we have become so interconnected. Additionally, it allows people to obtain the information they require quickly from the internet. In addition, many users utilize the internet to meet their entertainment needs , and others make use of it to locate jobs and make money. It is safe to say that the population has become accustomed to this technology.
So, even a second without internet access seems like an eternity. What do you think of the different languages which have been instrumental in establishing the internet? Let’s look into it:
1- Lisp
While this language isn’t commonly used, it contributed to the development of the internet in a variety of ways. The language was developed by John McCarthy in the late 1950s. The reason this language became so well-liked was that it provided certain modern-day features of the time, such as conditionals. Additionally, it did not distinguish between code and data. This means that it could consider code as data while data is code. Lisp is extensible in a variety of ways, and that’s why it was given the name of programmable language.
Lisp was soon to become the most popular programming language for the Artificial Intelligence community. This was the same group which was chosen by DARPA to develop what later was to become the internet. The late 1980s saw the language began to lose its popularity, yet it was not without its admirers. The most famous of those was creator of Y Combinator Paul Graham who made use of Lisp to build one of the first online-based businesses, Viaweb. Viaweb was later purchased by Yahoo. You’ll be amazed to learn that Reddit was developed using Common Lisp.
2- Perl
Perl played a significant contribution to the creation of the internet. However it has seen a decline in popularity since the late ’90s. The language was developed by Larry Wall during the late 1980s, while working in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA. The language was created at the time that Wall needed a configuration management tool to communicate with a variety of Unix computers on different shores. Because none of the available Unix tools could aid Wall, he invented Perl.
When Perl was first launched, it quickly attracted the attention of a large number of developers. Given how strong the community grew, Perl was made an open-source project. As web began to gain substantial popularity, the language became the most popular option for creating websites that were dynamic. It was a bit like C however it was distinct in that it didn’t have to manage memory manually. It was able to allow developers to write, test, and test their programs immediately.
3- PHP
PHP is considered to be the most important building block needed to build more dynamic and modern web pages. It is now officially the successor to Perl. Similar to Perl it’s an open-source language that lets developers run code. If you’re unfamiliar with the language, be aware that many major websites like Facebook utilize PHP to function smoothly. PHP was invented by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. Language is extremely important. If you’re developing websites, you must be knowledgeable about PHP. The reason PHP has been hugely popular is because it can be embedded directly into web pages. This avoids the effort of adding PHP script into another program, and then creating HTML code with C and Perl. It allows those who are familiar with HTML to master PHP quickly and easily, which they could later apply to the web page in order to increase the interactiveness of the site.
4- C Language
Anyone with even any interest at all in computer programming has heard of C. The language was developed in the 1970s in the ’70s by Bell Labs. It was among the very first languages with an OS written into it. Its operating system was not a different one than Unix. Since Unix was designed in C it was simple to move Unix to different platforms.
Writing Unix using C was a major accomplishment. Prior to this operating systems were written in assembly language. This is due to the fact that they had to be close to hardware. Yet, C is a high-level language and was very close to the hardware, so creating an OS wasn’t that hard. This led to Unix, the first OS that could be used on a portable device.
C isn’t just restricted to Unix. It actually had many successes beyond it. It is fascinating to learn that Windows is written by using C. The language is used by numerous other applications that use C. C is a major part of the history of the internet.
