Evolution of computer programming
languages
Evolution of computer programming
languages
The first programming languages predate the modern computer. At first, the languages
were codes.
During a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi
Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine.
With the article, she appended a set of notes which specified in complete detail a method for
calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognized by some historians as the world's first
computer program. But some biographers debate the extent of her original contributions versus
those of her husband.
The Jacquard loom, invented in 1801, used holes in punched cards to represent sewing loom arm
movements in order to generate decorative patterns automatically.
The first computer codes were specialized for the applications. In the first decades of the
twentieth century, numerical calculations were based on decimal numbers. Eventually it was
realized that logic could be represented with numbers, as well as with words. For example,
Alonzo Church was able to express the lambda calculus in a formulaic way. The Turing machine
was an abstraction of the operation of a tape-marking machine, for example, in use at the
telephone companies. However, unlike the lambda calculus, Turing's code does not serve well as
a basis for higher-level languages — its principal use is in rigorous analyses of algorithmic
complexity.
Like many "firsts" in history, the first modern programming language is hard to identify. From
the start, the restrictions of the hardware defined the language. Punch cards allowed 80 columns,
but some of the columns had to be used for a sorting number on each card. Fortran included
some keywords which were the same as English words, such as "IF", "GOTO" (go to) and
"CONTINUE". The use of a magnetic drum for memory meant that computer programs also had
to be interleaved with the rotations of the drum. Thus the programs were more hardware
dependent than today.
To some people the answer depends on how much power and human-readability is required
before the status of "programming language" is granted. Jacquard looms and Charles Babbage's
Difference Engine both had simple, extremely limited languages for describing the actions that
