How did the first programming language work?

Question

How did the first programming language work? As they had no programming languages before it how did it work?

Answer 1

The first real language, Assembly was invented in the 1940s and is the basis for all programming languages today. It worked by sending commands (or opcodes) directly to the processor.

Answer 2

UNIVAC was the first commercial computer. You can find some info on it here...



http://univac1.0catch.com/



Original computers were programmed directly in assembler language with op codes to load registers, add, multiply, jump and such.



As programming languages came to be, with FORTRAN among the first, if arrays were used incorrectly, memory outside the intended program structures could be affected, possibly overwriting a different program. Thus the need for Virtual Memory and running each program in its own memory space was born, and the IBM System/360 and System/370 in the early to mid 60's was the leader of this trend, which Microsoft has rediscovered comparitively recently in efforts to protect Winduhs apps from stepping on each other.

Answer 3

Even before assembly language was machine language which is purely binary numbers. Humans never really used machine language much. Humans used machine language to develop assemblers which assembled themselves to make better versions of assemblers.