An overview of programming languages for specialized application areas

• Authors: J. E. Sammet
• Venue: AFIPS '72 (Spring) Proceedings of the May 16-18, 1972, spring joint computer conference
• Year: 1971

There are more than 165 different programming languages in use in the United States today, where only higher level languages are considered as programming languages. If assembly languages were considered in this total it would obviously be much higher. The total number would be still greater if programming languages in use outside the United States were included. (They are excluded here only because of the difficulty of obtaining accurate and sufficiently detailed information.) As individuals, and as an industry, we should ask ourselves, "What is the reason for this enormous proliferation?", particularly since many of these languages claim to be "general purpose." Some languages do serve a wide variety of users and applications, whereas others are restricted in intended usage. The languages which have few users are usually in that category because (a) they are basically for a narrow application area which has relatively few users or (b) information about the language has not been widely disseminated, or (c) the language and/or its implementation is ineffective and/or has inadequate support, or (d) the language is implemented only on a computer not widely used. The purpose of this paper is to provide some of the background and perspective on the existence, classifications, and general characteristics of those languages which are oriented toward a specialized application area.