History of Coding

Coding has changed human civilization forever. You see coding every day even though you might not notice it, that’s how impactful coding is. For example, when you text someone on your phone, the computer doesn’t understand when you click on the letter so coding helps the computer understand, and then the letter will appear on your screen. That is a straightforward example. Without coding, 90% of the things we use today won’t be available. But how did this invention start, and when did it start? Let’s take a deeper dive into the History of Coding.

Coding was first invented in the 60 A.D and was created by the brilliant professor Mr. Heron of Alexandria. He was an astonishing mathematician and engineer. One of his inventions was the puppet machine, in which to work you had to pull a few strings for the puppet to do something. This machine inspired the basic code. There weren’t many other inventions that altered coding history but 1800 years later, a coding genius by the name of Joseph Marie Jacquard changed Coding forever. Joseph created a machine called the Jacquard Loom, which basically made carpets, rugs, and blankets of different colors. Then the machine would copy the same thing over and over again, which invented the program called loop. 

Towards the end of the 1800s a mathematician in London, UK named Charles Babbage created the first computer called the Analytical Engine. He dreamed of creating a machine that could calculate numbers quickly, but he gave up midway and wanted to make a better machine. That became the Analytical Engine. He didn’t have enough money to build the Analytical machine so he couldn’t finish it. Another mathematician saw this idea and was intrigued by it. Her name was Ada Lovelace. She came up with a theory called a program that didn’t exist then. But again coding went quiet again for some time until World War 2 started. Another mathematician by name of Alan Turing was on the allies side in World War 2 and his job was to break the Axis side code. He and his coding team broke the code by creating a machine. Now the Allies knew Germany’s naval movements. In the later stages of World War 2, a man named Tommy Flowers, who worked with telegraphs made a programmable computer using those telegraphs. That machine was known as the colossal l. It helped during important wars. People didn’t know about this computer since 1950 since it was top secret.

In the 1950s, computer programming languages started to take off. The first programming language was called the short code, which was created by IBM. Then a few years later, they built a faster version of the short code called the speed code. Ever since computer programming languages started to take off, the job was in high demand. There were more languages added to coding over the years and computers have also advanced, which made coding a lot easier for a lot of people.

Coding has been essential for human civilization for a very long time. It started out very simple, like a lot of great inventions but over time people realized coding could be revolutionary and made it more complicated. This was when coding really started to take off and thanks to coding the world in terms of technology have advanced at a very high rate. Coding is still evolving, which will result in technology advancing even more.