The choice of Programming Language may seem unimportant in modern Content Management Systems, but if your webmasters and IT staff harbor visions of customizing your CMS, you had better choose one written in a language they know well.

A large number of programming languages are used for content management, with Perl? being the earliest. Simple CGI (CommonGatewayInterface) "scripts" are still largely written in Perl?.

When the earliest content management systems wanted the ability to assemble a dynamic web page out of content components, they first turned to Tcl? (Tool Command Language). Tcl was conceived as a "glue" language for binding together code components written in low-level languages like C. It was perfect for glueing together content chunks in a structured page by inserting them into a page template.

Perl? and Tcl? are both highly portable (they run on all platforms) and interpreted languages (requiring no extra compilation into a binary code to run). They are also free and open source.

Other "scripting languages" that are used on the middleware application server for content management are Cold Fusion?, PHP?, Python?, and VB Script?.

Javascript? is an interpreted scripting language that was briefly used on the server side in Netscape Live Wire? middleware. Today it is standardized as ECMA Script? and is widely used on the client-side (in the web browser).

With Perl and Tcl, the HTML code for the page was explicitly programmed in the scripting language. The HTML code was generated as program output. As part of its Internet Infomation Server, Microsoft introduced the concept of a Server Page.

Microsoft's Active Server Pages combine straight HTML code with special embedded tags that can incorporate a scripting language, initially VB Script?, then Javascript? and Perl Script?. Java Server Pages is Sun Microsystem's competitive approach that uses Java in the embedded tags.

Microsoft's ASP.NET uses lower-level programming languages like VB and C# in the tags.

References:
History of CMS
Wikipedia