What is the first programming language and how was it created? DISSCUSS

When was it created?
How was it made because that time there were none?
Is it Java or HTML or Python? Scratch is based on it

Scratch On!

VedanshS933 wrote:

(#1)
What is the first programming language and how was it created? DISSCUSS

When was it created?
How was it made because that time there were none?
Is it Java or HTML or Python? Scratch is based on it

Scratch On!

Binary. 10101010101010101010

Assembly language was the first proper programming language that was compiled or interpreted by the computer. Raw binary data would have been fed into the CPU, most likely via punch cards, to write the compiler.

If Python is based on C how can it be the first (well at least I thought so, now there are more python implementations than CPython)? C was made before Python (C in 1972-73, Python late 1980s)
If HTML relies on browsers how can it be the first? It was only started in late 1990 (source)
I think it's Assembly - it's been here for many, many years (more than 100 !!!) It isn't cross platform though, as the instructions in Assembly are usually specific for the CPU. This wikipedia page has some more information.

VedanshS933 wrote:

s it Java or HTML or Python? Scratch is based on it

HTML is not a programming language
Scratch is not based on Java or Python. It's based off of JavaScript.

VedanshS933 wrote:

What is the first programming language and how was it created? DISSCUSS

When was it created?
How was it made because that time there were none?
Is it Java or HTML or Python? Scratch is based on it

Scratch On!

Java and Python are very high-level to be the first languages, and HTML is a markup language not a programming language. Therefore, the first language is probably Assembly

FORTRAN lol just google it, it's so easy

dhuls wrote:

VedanshS933 wrote:

s it Java or HTML or Python? Scratch is based on it

HTML is not a programming language
Scratch is not based on Java or Python. It's based off of JavaScript.

A bit of the language tree:
Machine Language
|Assembly
||FORTRAN
||C
|||C++
||||Python,HTML,ect(interpreted)

so it is assembly?

mbrick2 wrote:

Binary. 10101010101010101010

Binary is not a programming language

Other people in this thread have agreed on “assembly, probably” but I think there's more to it that that.
Really, “assembly” isn't really a programming language any more than “object oriented” is. There are multiple different assembly languages with different standards, which are designed for different processors. So if we want to know the first assembly language, we need to know the first computer.

But, there are different contenders for that depending on what a “computer” actually is.

Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine is a good contender for the first computer, and Ada Lovelace wrote programs for it. I'm not sure that language was ever named or really formalized. Another problem is that a real Analytical Engine was never built, so the language only exists as specification. Up to you if that counts or not.

The Turing Machine is also theoretical, but it is also the formalization of the types of things a programming language needs to do to be considered “Turing Complete” so there is some value in considering it. If you go with that, the transition functions that Alan Turing described are written in the first programming language.

Z1 was built in Germany during WWII. It was actually built and did general logic, but it didn't have branching so it wasn't Turing complete. If a programming language means “a real physical computer doing a easily changeable sequence of math on some input” to you, this is probably it.

Plankalkül was a proper language developed for the Z series of computers (mainly the Z3), but the catch is that it never got implemented until much later. Its in a grey area since like the Ada language it was never used, but unlike Ada the computer it was designed for did physically exist.

Colossus in 1943 was special purpose by design (for cipher breaking) but was Turing complete… as long as you arranged all ten machines in a specific way. It was never actually arranged that way at the time, and nobody wrote programs for it like that.

ENIAC in 1945 is perhaps the strongest contender. It was Turing complete, but programming it involved physically rewiring the machine. If the placement of wires can be a programming language, then this is it.

By 1948 computers were storing programs in memory. That means programs were written directly in some form of binary and loaded into computer memory much easier than any before. The first of these was Manchester Baby, so maybe it's binary language is the first programming language?

But maybe a programming language is when you don't write in machine code, but write in some symbolic notation that another program turns into machine code. In that case, EDSAC in 1949 let you write in symbolic notation and then an assembler translated it to the raw binary that would actually run on the machine.

Then, a year later, UNIVAC lets you run short code. If early assembly is too low level and corresponds to machine code too much for your taste, “Short Code” is at one of the first high level languages. You could write expression like “ X3 = ( X1 + Y1 ) / X1 * Y1” and it would interpret them at runtime.

Autocode in 1952 was (maybe) the first compiled language to be actually used, and shortly after A-0 introduced the idea of a compiler that could compile for different machines. If a programming language needs to be independent of any one hardware, the answer is A-0.

FLOW-MATIC in 1955 was the first language to actually use some English words in its syntax.

And finally, FORTRAN, in 1957, is probably the earliest “modern” language, in that it still in use today in a lot of places.

So… the answer is “it depends.” I'd probably put my answer somewhere between ENIAC's wires and EDSAC's assembly, but this really comes down to a philosophical question rather than a technical one. I could see arguments for anything from the Analytical Engine (and possibly earlier) to FORTRAN being considered the first.