Introduction to Programming History of Programming Charles Babbage

Introduction to Programming

History of Programming Charles Babbage Lived from 1791 - 1871 Called the “father of the computer” Created the Analytical Engine Trivia: In 1908, after being preserved for 37 years in alcohol, Babbage's brain was dissected by Sir Victor Horsley of the Royal Society.

History of Programming George Boole Lived from 1815 -1864 Described the symbolic logic system

A Powerful Program Fortran • An acronym derived from The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System • First appeared in 1956 • Easy to use input and output system, code was short and easy to follow • First commercial high-level programming language

Sample Fortran Program C FORTRAN IV WAS ONE OF THE FIRST PROGRAMMING C LANGUAGES TO SUPPORT SOURCE COMMENTS WRITE (6, 7) 7 FORMAT(13 H HELLO, WORLD) STOP END

What is Programming? Programming is the ability to talk to the computer in a language it can understand using grammar and syntax that it can follow to get it to perform useful tasks for you. You write code and the computer interprets your request and does something. The code must be correct and unambiguous.

Why so Many Programming Languages? The code you type in is not the code that the computer understands. A program converts the code from text into a certain type of language that the computer can decipher. What is that language (think back to the fifth week of class)?

What if you Can’t Write a Program? You could write an algorithm…