Computers need programming languages to function. That’s just a simple fact of life. However, these languages didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. They were developed by people for explicit purposes.

Long before you were picking up Python and JavaScript, in the predawn darkness of May 1, 1964, a modest but pivotal moment in computing history unfolded at Dartmouth College. Mathematicians John G.

Software-testing firm Tiobe, which maintains a monthly tracker of the popularity of the vast array of programming languages available to software developers, has picked C++ as its programming language ...