Codes That Changed The World

Episodes

EpisodeTitleFirst
Broadcast
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01Fortran20150406

The history of computing is dominated by the hardware; the race for speed and power has overshadowed how we've devised ways to instruct these machines to do useful tasks.

In this 5 part series Aleks Krotoski tells the story of the languages we've used to talk to the machines. FORTRAN is the oldest of what are called high level languages and marked a revolution in computing. With its invention programmers no longer had to work at the level of the machine in ones and zeroes but could talk in terms of the problem they wanted solved. And those problems were the calculations that allowed everything from the space race to nuclear power to become a reality.

Aleks Krotoski explores the language that helped put men on the moon and harness the atom.

Aleks Krotoski tells the story of the languages that have been used to talk to machines.

02Cobol20150407Deeply unpopular, but 80 per cent of the world's business software was written in it. Why?

Aleks Krotoski tells the story of the languages that have been used to talk to machines.

03Basic20150408As language of choice for home computing in the 1980s, Basic became iconic.

Aleks Krotoski tells the story of the languages that have been used to talk to machines.

04Java20150409The language that people probably interact with on a daily basis more than any other.

Aleks Krotoski tells the story of the languages that have been used to talk to machines.

05The Tower of Babel20150410Aleks Krotoski explores how today's digital world is a reverse Tower of Babel.

Aleks Krotoski tells the story of the languages that have been used to talk to machines.