THE DESIGN AND USE OF CONVENTIONAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Michael Jackson · 1980
Jean Sammet’s Roster of Programming Languages for 1974-75 (Sammet 1976) includes 167 different programming languages which were in use in the United States at the end of 1975: a full list, including languages used chiefly outside the United States and languages which had fallen into disuse by the end of 1975, would perhaps have run to 500 languages. There are languages for special purposes: APT is for programming numerical control of machine tools; SIMSCRIPT is for discrete simulation; COGO is for civil engineering; CONNIVER is for artificial intelligence studies; COBOL is for administrative and business data processing. There are languages intended for general-purpose use: ALGOL 60, ALGOL 68, PASCAL, PL/I and SIMULA 67 are perhaps the best known of these.