Web programming languages have evolved from one technology to another. This evolution has been aided by the increased affinity and inclination of most people to the internet. The internet constitutes a global platform where different people and organizations converge to share ideas, information and resources. Programming languages are the enabling technologies behind the internet wave and most technological application used in numerous organizations across the world. The needs, complexities and functionalities of websites have expanded with the demands of internet users and expanding business objectives.
This study examines the evolution of web programming languages, the major types, their functionalities, the future of web-enabled applications and the programming languages/technologies that drive them. The major types of web programming languages include Ada, HTML, Basic, C++ DHTML, JavaScript, . NET, Java, Lisp, Ajax ,Java web 2. 0. Perl, Visual Basic and so on. Web Programming & Development The basic programming language that was first used in building most websites is the Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML). It is still in use today but different versions have been developed to increase its capabilities.
This language allows web developers to edit the look and feel of their web pages to suit their needs. A modification to HTML is the Extensible Hyper Text Mark-up Language (XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). HTML is easy to learn and its codes are executed through the incorporation of commands known as tags. CSS is a lot easier because it creates a distinction between the style, presentation controls and the content of the web pages. It makes programming easier by preventing a lot of HTML Coding. HTML can be described as a Markup language that comprises a set of tags which are used to describe web pages that are under construction.
These tags usually come in pairs that are capable of giving functionality to the web pages. HTML can enclose scripting languages such as JavaScript and is easily compatible with other web programming languages (Moller & Schwartzbach, 2006). The first programming language that serves as the basis of all other programming languages was created by Ada Lovelace and Babbage who wrote programs for the “difference engine” and the “analytical engine” (Sureau, 2008). By 1954, Fortran was created. It was the first high-level language to make use of a compiler.
Fortran is the acronym for formula translation and it was invented by John Backus and researchers at IBM. The main purpose of Fortran was the translation of mathematical formulas and functions into computer code. Functions, Sub-routines and loops were introduced with Fortran II. In 1958, Lisp was invented by John McCarthy as a form of list processing programming language. It was well known for its use in meta-programming applications. It can also be described as a programmable programming language used most in artificial intelligence applications (Sureau, 2008).
Basic, an acronym for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was designed in 1963 as an interactive code that could be interpreted. Basic has been used largely in the design of most PCs. Statistics reveal that by 2006, over half of the total number of developers for . NET platform used mostly Visual Basic. Microsoft still uses Basic today; Visual Basic is a flavour of Basic that is used in developing applications for daily use which is significantly influenced by the original BASIC. ASP is another programming language used for developing web applications.
Other flavors of BASIC include Microsoft Basic, Apple Basic, TI-Basic and so on (Sureau, 2008). Structured Query Language (SQL) is another programming language that is used in web programming. Most websites are database-driven and have the capability to supply information based on the users’ requirements. SQL is a database programming language that has a robust set of features for executing commands such as sorting, listing, backing up data and general management of data. SQL is used in the query of relational database management systems (RDBMS).
MySQL is another query tool used for relational databases and has the same functions as the SQL programming language but it is an open source technology. This means that anyone can add to it and modify the code according to their needs (Moller & Schwartzbach, 2006). Java is an object-oriented web programming tool developed by James Gosling and notable programmers at Sun Microsystems. It was initially released into the market as an interactive language known as oak in 1991. In 1994, it was rewritten, customized for the internet and became known as Java.
Java programming language derives its structure and syntax from elements of C and C++ programming languages. Java applications are compiled to structures known as byte code and can run seamlessly on interpreters known as Java Virtual Machines. Java is a free software application and is used rampantly in the development of numerous web and mobile applications (Sureau, 2008). Another interesting web programming tool is PHP, an acronym for Personal Home Pages Hypertext Processor that was introduced by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995.
It is a scripting language that can be used in conjunction with HTML and other web programming languages. It allows web developers to build dynamic pages and it can produce a pure HTML page. PHP is a general-purpose, open-source scripting language that is suited for web development. It is implemented via the use of a web server and is very popular with web developers. It receives PHP code as input and produces web pages as output. It can easily be installed on any operating system and it is presently deployed at over 20 million websites all over the world.
PHP can perform server-side scripting and is in the league of operating systems such as Java Server Pages (JSP) invented by Sun Microsystems’, Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP), and mod_perl (Sureau, 2008). JavaScript Programming Language, now officially known as ECMA Script was introduced in 1995 by Brendan Eich of Netscape. It is a dynamic programming language that has significant linkage to web browsers. It is extremely popular and quite easy to use when compared with other languages.
The main objective of JavaScript is to add interactivity to pages coded in simple HTML. It is a scripting language that is usually encoded into HTML code. It acts as an interpreted language and does not require a compiler (w3schools, 2009). AJAX is not a new programming language and is a combination of XML and JavaScript. It was made popular by Google when it was implemented in Google Suggest. AJAX is centered on JavaScript and HTTP requests and can be used to create faster and easy-to-navigate web-enabled applications (Moller & Schwartzbach, 2006).