Editing Imperative programming (section)

==History of imperative and object-oriented languages==
The earliest imperative languages were the machine languages of the original computers. In these languages, instructions were very simple, which made hardware implementation easier but hindered the creation of complex programs. [[FORTRAN]], developed by [[John Backus]] at [[International Business Machines]] (IBM) starting in 1954, was the first major programming language to remove the obstacles presented by machine code in the creation of complex programs. FORTRAN was a [[compiled language]] that allowed named variables, complex expressions, subprograms, and many other features now common in imperative languages. The next two decades saw the development of many other major high-level imperative programming languages. In the late 1950s and 1960s, [[ALGOL]] was developed in order to allow mathematical algorithms to be more easily expressed and even served as the [[operating system]]'s target language for some computers. [[MUMPS]] (1966) carried the imperative paradigm to a logical extreme, by not having any statements at all, relying purely on commands, even to the extent of making the IF and ELSE commands independent of each other, connected only by an intrinsic variable named $TEST. [[COBOL]] (1960) and [[BASIC]] (1964) were both attempts to make programming syntax look more like English. In the 1970s, [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] was developed by [[Niklaus Wirth]], and [[C (programming language)|C]] was created by [[Dennis Ritchie]] while he was working at [[Bell Laboratories]]. Wirth went on to design [[Modula-2]] and [[Oberon (programming language)|Oberon]]. For the needs of the [[United States Department of Defense]], [[Jean Ichbiah]] and a team at [[Honeywell]] began designing [[Ada (programming language)|Ada]] in 1978, after a 4-year project to define the requirements for the language. The specification was first published in 1983, with revisions in 1995, 2005, and 2012.

The 1980s saw a rapid growth in interest in [[object-oriented programming]]. These languages were imperative in style, but added features to support [[object (computing)|objects]]. The last two decades of the 20th century saw the development of many such languages. [[Smalltalk]]-80, originally conceived by [[Alan Kay]] in 1969, was released in 1980, by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center ([[PARC (company)|PARC]]). Drawing from concepts in another object-oriented language—[[Simula]] (which is considered the world's first [[object-oriented programming language]], developed in the 1960s)—[[Bjarne Stroustrup]] designed [[C++]], an object-oriented language based on [[C (programming language)|C]]. Design of [[C++]] began in 1979 and the first implementation was completed in 1983. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the notable imperative languages drawing on object-oriented concepts were [[Perl]], released by [[Larry Wall]] in 1987; [[Python (programming language)|Python]], released by [[Guido van Rossum]] in 1990; [[Visual Basic (classic)|Visual Basic]] and [[Visual C++]] (which included [[Microsoft Foundation Class Library]] (MFC) 2.0), released by [[Microsoft]] in 1991 and 1993 respectively; [[PHP]], released by [[Rasmus Lerdorf]] in 1994; [[Java (programming language)|Java]], by [[James Gosling]] ([[Sun Microsystems]]) in 1995, [[JavaScript]], by [[Brendan Eich]] ([[Netscape]]), and [[Ruby (programming language)|Ruby]], by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, both released in 1995. Microsoft's [[.NET Framework]] (2002) is imperative at its core, as are its main target languages, [[VB.NET]] and [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]] that run on it; however Microsoft's [[F Sharp (programming language)|F#]], a functional language, also runs on it.