Developers often debate which language to start with, but the choice matters less than the underlying patterns they share. These shared patterns—loops, recursion, and data structures—form a set of ur-languages. The article lists seven: ALGOL, Lisp, ML, Self, Forth, APL, and Prolog, each offering a distinct mental model for coding in software engineering today.

ALGOL anchors the majority of modern languages. From Fortran to JavaScript, the same core constructs—assignments, conditionals, loops—persist. Its lineage traces back to Ada Lovelace and the Analytical Engine, cementing a heritage that shaped structured programming in the 1960s and spawned derivatives like C, C++, and Python that still dominate industry stacks for software development worldwide.

Lisp’s hallmark lies in its prefix syntax and macro system, which allow code to manipulate code. Its early adoption in AI research—through languages such as Common Lisp and Scheme—demonstrated how symbolic manipulation could drive intelligent behavior. Modern variants like Clojure continue to leverage these concepts in concurrent, functional programming contexts for developers today in industry.

ML introduced first-class functions and a powerful type system that enabled safe, expressive code. Starting with StandardML, the family expanded to Haskell, OCaml, and dependently typed languages like Agda. These tools illustrate how different ur-languages shape programming idioms, influencing everything from compiler design to everyday application development for developers across domains today and future practice.