History of Programming Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

History of Programming - Essay Example The essay "History of Programming" talks about the history of programming and programming languages that took place in various periods along with examples of prominent computer languages used. Futurist Raymond Kurzweil aptly stated that â€Å"if the automobile industry had made as much progress [as computers and software] in the past fifty years, a car today would cost a hundredth of a cent and go faster than the speed of light". The idea of synthesizing available science and means to get work from machines was not a new one. For example, Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a mechanical loom to make it easier to create complex designs for textiles. However, machines which could be classified as computers and based on electronics started appearing in the late 1940s. The initial machines were large physical machines, usually as big as a room and weighing tons in weight. To program these machines, low-level machine language was used, which, by its nature, was specific to the machine. Fast forward to today, and one can use ebooks which are many orders of magnitude more powerful than the computers of earlier years and high-level languages can perform actions which could not be imagined 60 years ago. O’Reilly Media, a noted publisher of technology books, has created a visual map of programming languages as they evolved during the short and fast-paced history of computing since the 1950’s. This map has been useful in writing this paper as it provides a single snapshot and reference of developments in the area over the years.