The First Programming Languages: Crash Course Computer Science #11

John Backus, the FORTRAN project director, said:

"Much of my work has come from being lazy."

Many consider the holy grail of programming to be the use of

"plain ol' English", where you can literally just speak what you want the computer to do, it figures it out, and executes it.

Compiler

A computer program created to read an entire program and convert it into a lower-level language and ultimately to assembly language used by the processor.

Pascal

an imperative and procedural programming language, which Niklaus Wirth designed in 1968-69 and published in 1970, as a small, efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring. It is named in honor of the French mathematician, philosopher and physicist Blaise Pascal.

Python

an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991

This notion is called write once,

run anywhere

variables

abstractions for needed memory locations

A-0

high-level programming language called "Arithmetic Language Version 0"

Programs written in FORTRAN were __________________ than equivalent handwritten assembly code

20 times shorter

Assembler

A program that translates a symbolic version of instructions into the binary version.

ALGOL

ALGOrithmic Language released in 1960 - Provided a standard notation for computer scientists to publish algorithms in journals - Included structured control statements for sequencing (begin-end) blocks, loops (for loop), and selection (if and if-else statements) - Supported different numeric types - Introduced the array structure - Supported procedures, including recursive procedures

COBOL

An acronym for common business-oriented language, a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use

Java

An object-oriented programming language designed specifically for programs (particularly multimedia) to be used over the Internet. Java allows programmers to create small programs or applications to enhance websites.

It's extremely likely that the web browser you're using right now was written in

C++ or Objective-C.

Dr. Grace Hopper

Mathematician who worked on developing software for computers; developed the Compiler; and created FORTRAN; coined the phrase "debug"

FORTRAN

One of the original high level languages, short for Formula Translation, created by John Backus to make programming easier for math and science applications.

Machine Language

The language made up of binary-coded instructions that is used directly by the computer

Committee on Data Systems Languages

a consortium formed in 1959 to guide the development of a standard programming language that could be used on many computers

ruby

a dynamic, interpreted, reflective, object-oriented, general-purpose programming language. It was designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan.

LISP

a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1958, it is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today

PERL

a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages, Perl 5 and Perl 6. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language"

C#

a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language encompassing strong typing, imperative, declarative, functional, generic, object-oriented, and component-oriented programming disciplines. It was developed around 2000 by Microsoft within its .NET initiative and later approved as a standard by Ecma and ISO.

Swift

a general-purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language developed by Apple Inc. for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, Linux and z/OS. Swift is designed to work with Apple's Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks and the large body of existing Objective-C code written for Apple products.

Pseudo-Code

a notation resembling a simplified programming language, used in program design.

Go

a statically typed, compiled programming language designed at Google by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. Go is syntactically similar to C, but with the added benefits of memory safety, garbage collection, structural typing, and CSP-style concurrency.

C++

a statically-typed, free-form, (usually) compiled, multi-paradigm, intermediate-level general-purpose middle-level programming language." In simple terms, C++ is a sophisticated, efficient and a general-purpose programming language based on C. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979.

BASIC

an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use.

mnemonics

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices

They "patched" some bugs in this program by literally

putting patches of paper over the holes on the punch tape.

Programming at the hardware level is cumbersome and inflexible, so programmers wanted a more versatile way to program computers -

what you might call a "softer" medium.