History of programming
We had had a loooong way to go until we ended up where we are today. Let me take you on a little journey...
Humble beginnings of programming
Textiles and Punch Cards
The first programs weren't written on a screen. Heck they weren't even written at all!
They were punched into cards and they didn't display a shiny UI. They were used to automate machines involved in the weaving process.
We want to calculate!
Not only our dear computer science people wanted computing to work. Mathmeticians and the S.T.E.M. field in general had a huge impact on the development of modern computing.
They also left their marks on the field:
Things like Lambda expressions (often seen with python functions, stemming from the lambda calculus or how programming languages handle mathmetical operations are still relevant to this day.
Two origins of modern computing
In the end, there were two big movements: one from the computer engineering field, another from the Maths/S.T.E.M. field. They approached this differently though.
When computer science thought about the specific implementation (for example making recursion as fast as loops), S.T.E.M. mostly focused on the theoretical approach of computing:
If it could be done, it was (basically) solved. As seen with things like letting roots stay in results:
A square with sides of 1, calculation of its diagonal
Low Level Predecessor Languages
What are these languages?
Low Level Predecessor Languages are languages associated with the beginnings of programming, often serving as a base for other languages to build upon.
Can I have your compiler?
If you don't know what a compiler is look at the next lesson.
It was common for languages back then to write their compiler on an existing compiler platform/programming language.
The first more known instance of this was the C programming language:
To keep it short: C used Assembly to write it's compiler.
A compiler is a program that is used to execute code by translating the code you write into a language computers can understand binary code.
An interpreter is also a program used to execute code but instead of translating the whole programm at once like the compiler does, it only translates the pieces that are currently needed.
Code is the thing that you write to create a program so a computer can execute it with the help of the compiler.
Now you may ask: But how can it be that there's C code when I look up the source code of the C compiler?
Let's see what happened there:
So the base of the C compiler is Assembly code which in turn is translated into binary code.
How can the compiler be written in C then? - It isn't really written in C.
Under the hood it's all Assembly. They just used Assembly to code the necessary parts of the language compiler and could then use the C programming language itself to extend its functionality.
If you wanna have a specific history from a compiler borrowing progression:
Binary > Assembly > C (1973, Dennis Ritchie) > C++ (1983, Bjarne Stroustrup) > Java (1995, Sun Microsystems) > Kotlin (2011, JetBrains)
The rise of popularity in the 90s
Following the languages that build on Assembler and lower level languages, high level languages like Java and Python increased the popularity of software development.
While low level languages provided high memory control, high level languages provided abstractions that enabled more rapid development as well as adressed other use cases where memory allocation isn't the main focus.
The web language trinity of HTML, CSS and JavaScript was also born during this time allowing the evolving internet to grow.
All of this was possible because of multiple trends during that time:
- The rise of personal computers
- The attractive tech job market during that time
- The upcoming of tech companies and their need for technically versed staff
The dot com crash
After a boom a crash will follow...
The dot com crash was one of the most devastating setbacks for software development.
It was caused by high speculation and the growing discrepancy between the investments in tech and the low ROI (Return On Investment) on them.
Many startups failed during that time.
Unemployment spiked because of mass layoffs and the job market became highly competetive as new roles disappeared due to companies scaling back or canceling online projects.
The market had not only lost roles but the now unemployed software developers were faced with an oversaturated market where a job in the field was nearly impossible to get.
The start to code movement
After the market recovered, the 2010s "start to code movement" really made computer science popular again.
More resources and tutorials than ever before were made for starters and governments propagated computer science skills as "a basic skill in modern society".
But as with every hype it has to cool down after a while. In the end of the 2010s as well as the early 2020s the hype had mostly faded again.
The corona pandemic revival
Then corona hit...
I won't talk too much about our favourite virus here but one thing it did was bring some hype back into the field of computer science.
There are some key factors why there was a revival in the time of the pandemic:
- One of them being that lots of people were at home at this time and consuming more digitial media/products.
- Second of all, people interacted with the digital world on a larger scale than ever before.
The current stagnation
The current stagnation is a mix of multiple phenomenons falling together:
- First, we have our overhiring in the pandemic which then resulted in mass layoffs.
- Second, we have the oversaturation of the job market in the field of computer science, this set the bar higher for new grads and really everyone looking for a job in this field.
- Lastly, layoffs get justified with embracing new automation technologies like AI as cover for mass layoffs after the pandemic overhiring.