COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), a commercial and business programming language, concentrated on data organization and file-handling and is widely used today in business.

BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was developed at Dartmouth College in the early 1960s for use by non-professional computer users. The language came into almost universal use with the microcomputer explosion of the 1970s and 1980s. Condemned as slow, inefficient, and inelegant by its detractors, BASIC is nevertheless simple to learn and easy to use. Because many early microcomputers were sold with BASIC built into the hardware (in ROM memory) the language rapidly came into widespread use. The following very simple example of a BASIC program adds the numbers 1 and 2, and displays the result (the numerals 10 to 40 are line numbers):

10 A = 1
20 B = 2
30 C = A + B
40 Print C

Although hundreds of different computer languages and variants exist, several others deserve mention. PASCAL, originally designed as a teaching tool, is now one of the most popular microcomputer languages. LOGO was developed to introduce children to computers. C, a language Bell Laboratories designed in the 1970s, is widely used in developing systems programs, as is its successor, C++. LISP and PROLOG are widely used in artificial intelligence. Still further languages have been developed to permit programming in hypermedia, as in CD-ROM and Internet applications.