Assigment 4

History of Programming

The history of programming spans from the early 19th century to the present, marked by significant advancements and innovations. It began with Ada Lovelace, who is considered the first programmer for her work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine in the 1840s. The concept of modern computing took shape in the 1930s and 1940s with figures like Alan Turing, who conceptualized the Turing machine, and the development of early computers like Konrad Zuse's Z3 and the ENIAC.The 1950s saw the birth of high-level programming languages designed to simplify coding. FORTRAN, developed in 1957, was the first major high-level language aimed at scientific calculations, while COBOL, created in 1959, was tailored for business applications. LISP, introduced in 1958, became significant in artificial intelligence research.In the 1960s, structured programming emerged with languages like ALGOL, which influenced many future languages, and BASIC, which made programming more accessible to beginners. The 1970s brought further advancements with the creation of the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie, which became fundamental for system and application programming. This era also saw the development of the Unix operating system, which had a profound impact on the growth and development of programming and software engineering.