A Visual History

Evolution of
Programming

Ancestors, Descendants & Influence

1957 — Present

Preface

No programming language is created in isolation. Every language carries the DNA of those that came before it—borrowing a type system here, a concurrency model there, a syntax philosophy from somewhere else entirely.

This graph traces those lines of influence across seven decades, from Fortran's first compilation in 1957 to Zig's pursuit of simplicity today. Hover over any language to illuminate its ancestry and legacy.

Systems
Object-Oriented
Functional
Scripting
Other

Hover over a language to trace its lineage