Coding, or computer programming, is the foundation of the digital world that we are living in today. It refers to the process of giving proper instructions to a computer to perform specific tasks.
While coding is often associated with the idea of modern technology, its roots often go back centuries, when early thinkers were the ones who began exploring the idea and theory of automation and symbolic computation.
The story of the base of coding began in the era of 19th century with Ada Lovelace, who is often recognised as the world’s first computer programmer.
She worked with Charles Babbage, who worked on his Analytical Engine, an early mechanical computer design, and wrote algorithms that were mainly intended to be executed by the machine.
Though Babbage’s machine was something that was never completed, Lovelace’s notes have also laid the foundation for the modern programming concepts.
The 20th century also saw breakthroughs with the invention of the first electronic computers during the time of World War II.
Machines like the ENIAC and Colossus have also relied on manual wiring and even on the concept of switches to execute programs. Later, the development of the concept of assembly language came, which made coding more efficient by allowing various programmers to use many types of symbolic instructions instead of binary code.
In the 1950s and 1960s, various high-level programming languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, and BASIC were introduced in the field, thus making it easier for humans to communicate with computers. This period marked the beginning of the concept of software engineering as a formal discipline.
Over the decades, coding languages continued to evolve, leading to modern languages like C, Python, Java, and JavaScript, which power everything from websites to artificial intelligence.
