Absolute Beginner's Guide to Programming, Third Edition

The First Programs

The earliest computers were not programmed in the same way as today's computers. It took much more effort. The early computers' memories held only data and not programs. The concept of programming those early computers was vastly different because the programs were hard-wired into the machine. The programs were physically wired by experts to generate and process the data. The first computer programmers had never heard of using a keyboard, editor, and compiler; the first programmers were hardware experts, not software experts.

Programming these computers was very difficult. To make a change, the hardware programmer had to reroute the wires that made the program do its thing. It wasn't long before a man by the name of John von ...