Absolute Beginner's Guide to Programming, Third Edition

Chapter 3. Programming Languages: The Early Years

In This Chapter

• Storage of Programs and Data

• Binary Arithmetic

• The First Programs

• Enter the Keyboard

• Getting Closer to English

• Other Languages Through the Years

With this chapter, you can step into the ranks of the few, the proud, the people of tomorrow, by developing an understanding of several programming languages. This chapter focuses on the earlier programming languages, some of which are still in use today. You will learn how programming languages began and how they have evolved over the years.

The highlights of this chapter include the following:

• As you type keys on your keyboard, your computer accepts binary values that represent data.

• The ASCII code defines the binary patterns for each character ...