Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals
Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals is a 1969 book by Jean E. Sammet that surveys programming languages of the 1960s and explains how they developed up to that time. It became a standard reference for professionals in the field. Dag Spicer of the Computer History Museum called it a classic.
The book describes about 120 programming languages, providing technical definitions and usage, as well as the historical, political, and economic context behind each language. It includes extensive bibliographies and sample programs for many languages. Sammet offers an insider’s perspective thanks to her work shaping language development in the United States.
The author focuses on high‑level languages and on languages used in the U.S., excluding many languages outside the U.S. and those she regarded as not high‑level. The work covers both well‑known and obscure languages.
Sammet helped pioneer COBOL at Sylvania and FORMAC (an extension of FORTRAN) at IBM. She also started publishing annual reports in Computers and Automation from 1967 on the languages in use across the field. The dust jacket features a Tower of Babel image with the names of various languages on the bricks; a similar image appeared in the January 1961 issue of Communications of the ACM.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:44 (CET).