Becoming popular in the early 1990s and the norm today, object-oriented programming (OOP) languages, such as C++ and Java, provide a formal set of rules for creating and managing objects.

Clearly, there needed to be an easier language for programming those hulking early mainframes. That language, named in September 1959, became Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL).

COBOL, short for Common Business-Oriented Language, was one of the earliest computer languages. It was also, along with Fortran, one of the first programming languages to be based on English words.