The oldest programming languages still in use
The top 3 according to 3 votes from people: COBOL (1959) · Smalltalk (1972) · Prolog (1972). (Updated Mar 25, 2025.)
Fortran, Lisp and COBOL date from the 1950s and still run today in labs, banks and government offices: the veterans of programming. Which one have you worked with?
Automatically translated (original in Deutsch). See the original
Top 10
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1
COBOL (1959)
Still running in banks and government offices.
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2
Smalltalk (1972)
A pioneer of object-oriented programming.
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3
Prolog (1972)
Logic programming from France.
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4
Fortran (1957)
The first high-level language, still used in science today.
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5
Lisp (1958)
By John McCarthy, the language of early AI.
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6
BASIC (1964)
The beginner's language of home computers.
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7
Pascal (1970)
By Niklaus Wirth, designed for teaching.
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8
C (1972)
The language of Unix and the basis of many others.
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9
SQL (1974)
The language of databases.
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10
Ada (1980)
Named after Ada Lovelace, for safety-critical systems.
How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.
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