News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:100th anniversary of Konrad Zuse: creator of the first pr... by _b8r0 on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @10:00AM (#1451874)
Hmmm... In 1843 Ada Lovelace wrote a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with Babbage's Analytical Engine, and is generally considered to be the first computer program. Having said that the early 19th century Jacquard looms used punch cards for pattern instructions. Hollerith expanded on this with his 1890 census.

Zuse's language was never implemented in his lifetime. You could argue the same about Lovelace's algorithm, but not about Turing machines.

Zuse certainly developed the first programmable computer (albeit an electromechanical one, the first digital one was the UK Colossus a year later) and it's certainly an amazing achievement, but not the first programming languages.

Re:100th anniversary of Konrad Zuse: creator of the first pr... by ErrantX on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @10:04AM (#1451884)
Wikipedia has more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

It terms it the first high level non-von Neumann programming language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl

Re:100th anniversary of Konrad Zuse: creator of the first pr... by borisk on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @11:39AM (#1452175)
Actually Ada only published the code, which was earlier presented by Babbage (at his only public talk, in Italy).