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TechnologyWho Created It?
Programming languages carry their designers names the way tools carry their makers. Below: the pairs that show up in every history of computing.
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How to play
Read the language, then tap who created it.
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TechnologyWhat you are actually practicing
Programming languages carry their designers names, and knowing who made which one makes the history of computing much easier to follow. It also explains why certain languages feel the way they do: Python reads like English because its designer wanted it to, and Java grew out of a project with a very specific goal.
These pairings show up in every account of how software developed, which makes them a reliable set to memorise.
How the game works
You are shown a language and four possible creators. Tap the right one. A wrong pick reveals the answer immediately.
Easy uses the seven names with the strongest associations. Medium widens the pool. Hard uses the full list, including the academic languages.
The links worth knowing
Python was created by Guido van Rossum, released in 1991, and designed with readability as the main goal. Ruby was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto, who wanted a language people enjoyed using. PHP began as Rasmus Lerdorf's personal set of tools for building web pages.
Java was created by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems. JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich at Netscape in 1995, and the name is a marketing choice rather than a connection to Java. C was created by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs, and C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup, who wanted C with more structure.
Pascal was created by Niklaus Wirth as a teaching language, and Lisp by John McCarthy, for computing with lists. Fortran came from John Backus at IBM, MATLAB from Cleve Moler, Haskell from a committee led by Simon Peyton Jones, Erlang from Joe Armstrong, Scala from Martin Odersky, Swift from Chris Lattner, Go from Robert Griesemer and colleagues at Google, and Rust from Graydon Hoare.
How to get faster
Attach each language to a place and an era as well as a person. "Python, van Rossum, early 1990s" is far more durable than the name alone, because the context narrows the answer before you need it.
A note on the confusing pairs
Java and JavaScript have nothing to do with each other beyond a marketing resemblance. C and C++ are related, but C++ is not simply a newer C. And Perl was created by Larry Wall, who also wrote much of the surrounding tools.