You’ve probably heard the saying that in computer science, there are only two hard things, and one of them is naming things. Some language names make sense, like Google naming its programming language Go(lang), while others — like Python and Java — are less obvious.

In this article, let’s explore the history of the most iconic programming languages and how they got their names.

Python

Python began as an “amateur” programming project for Guido van Rossum to keep him occupied over Christmas. van

Rossum wanted the language to have a short, unique and mysterious name. If you saw Python’s “Two snakes” logo, you might think Python was named after a giant Python (one that could swallow whole crocodiles).

Guido is actually based on the 1970s British comedy group Monty Python’s Flying

It’s named after the Circus. It turned out that he was a big fan of the comedy group, and he was reading their script at the time.

Image Python’s “Two Snakes” logo has nothing to do with the origin of its name

Java

Java was developed by Sun Microsystems as part of the Green Project in the early 1990s. Developing a new language for the project was not their focus: Java was developed because they needed a processor-independent language that could provide most of the functionality of C++ while being easier to use. The top-secret Green team was set up to build “the next wave of computing” beyond the PERSONAL computer, which they believe should be interactive, digitally controlled consumer electronics (a precursor to “smart devices”).

The image Green team’s masterpiece: a wireless, full-color, touch-screen controller called Star7

Java was originally named Oak after the tree that stood outside the developer’s window. But Sun’s lawyers said Oak had already been registered as a trademark, so the Green team held a brainstorming session and came up with Java. They wanted the name to reflect the nature of the language: “dynamic, revolutionary, lively and fun.” After this “continuous crazy” brainstorming, Java was clearly the perfect choice.

While Star7 was a little ahead of its time and never really took off, its programming language did — and the rest is history.

JavaScript

JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich at Netscape in 1995

(the company behind Navigator, the most popular Web browser at the time). Back then, the web was completely static, but Netscape envisioned the interactive, dynamic web of today. Under pressure from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, they hired Eich to integrate the scripting language into the browser.

Netscape wanted to create a language that was easy to use. Riding on Java’s momentum, they want the language to become a “scripting companion to Java,” much like Visual

Basic is a companion to C/C++. Eich, who emphasized speed and ease of use, inherited most of Java’s syntax and wrote the first version of JavaScript, called Mocha, in just 10 days.

“My mission was to make it look Like Java, but not too bloated… It’s supposed to be a little brother language, right? Java’s little friend “. – Brendan Eich

When the language was first integrated into Netscape, it was called LiveScript. Before long, Netscape was fully engaged in the development of Java Companion. They worked with Sun to rename the language tO JavaScript, and promoted JavaScript with Java: a scripting language for performing small client-side tasks in a browser, while Java was a larger, more specialized tool for developing rich Web components. In fact, the origin of the name JavaScript was a marketing ploy by Netscape to try to compete with Microsoft.

C family of languages (C\C++\ Objective-c \C#)

The world’s first programming language is Ada, thanks to Ada

Lovelace. Soon after, there was B, from which C derives its name. C was developed by Dennis at Bell LABS

Ritchie developed what is considered by many to be the first high-level programming language.

The C language has many extensions, including C++, Objective-C, and C#. The names of C++ and Objective-C speak for themselves, while C# is less obvious. C# is partly inspired by music: a sharp (#) note means it should be raised half a pitch in pitch. Even more interesting, # contains four + symbols, a 2×2 square, perfectly illustrating that C# is C++ “increments”!

Swift

Apple began developing Swift in 2010 and first released it four years later. Because of objective-C’s influence, Apple touts Swift as a fast, easy-to-use, and secure design. At first, Swift was called “Shiny,” as if you were building a “Shiny thing.” In fact, it also uses.shiny as a file extension.

They eventually chose the name Swift to reflect its speed — in terms of performance and speed of development. Swift’s logo is a bird of the same name: Swift is a bird known for its speed and ability to stay in the air.

Image Swift’s logo is a bird of the same name

Haskell

Haskell was named after the logician Haskell Brooks

Named after Curry, who is well known for his work in combinatorial logic. In fact, several programming languages are named after parts of his full name: Haskell, Brook, and Curry! The concept of Currying was also named after him.

One of the less discussed aspects of Haskell is its logo. You may have noticed that the Haskell logo has a lambda symbol in it, which is the calculus of lambda

Calculus (calculus). If you look more closely, you can see that λ is sandwiched between the “>” and the “=”. This comes from the Monads binding operator >>=. Haskell’s signature is a binding operator interlaced with λ.

The image Haskell flag is a combination of the binding operator and the lambda symbol