History of Coding and Programming

Part1: Konrad Zuse

Our life is becoming more and more dependent on software, whether you are on your phone, laptop, car, or even using electric appliances, you are actually using somebody's code. That made me thinking, when and why the first programming language was invented? Are you curious too, If the answer is yes, keep reading.

In part one, we will primarily focus on the first programming language that was invented in early 1942 (Plankalkül) by Konrad Zuse. Zuse was a brilliant engineer who struggled, earlier in his career, to finding his passion.

Konrad was a German civil engineer who was born in 1910, worked for Ford motor company after graduation. In his first job, Konrad was doing a lot of calculations by hand. This was so tedious manual labor. Konrad dreamt of automating part of his job by inventing a machine. Back in these days, there were very limited hardware options for circuitry and computers. Konrad started working on creating his own. He started with Z1 (30,000 metal parts), which didn’t work well, then Z2 (which was built on the telephone relays). Z3 came afterward which was revolutionary. A 22-bit floating-point calculator that supports (I) loops (2) Exception handling. Z4 which some historian believes that it was the first digital computer. Z4 was 32-bit and supported mathematical functions such as sine, square root, max, min.

What motivated Konrad to invent the first programming language?

Konrad figured that programming using machine language is very hard and complicated (Did you see a pattern yet?). So he used his knowledge of calculus and invented a high-level programming language.

Konrad was way ahead of his time. He programmed his language to be only yes/no (binary). He actually developed his own calculus which later he figured out was already invented and called propositional calculus. He is also a pioneer in developing algorithm notions and defining basic concepts such as loops and exception handling as part of his programming language. His work reflects a very forward-thinking and imaginations which is in line with a quote from his book The Computer — My Life where he actually says

“Imagination is the key to all progress” Zuse

How does the Z3 computer look like?

Unfortunately, because of his political history, Konrad Zuse's work and contributions are usually discarded by historians.

Lessons Learned from his life?

• Manual Labor and mind-numbing tasks can be great motivation for inventions.
• Finding your passion takes time, however finding your right calling can change the world.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel, save time and effort by building on top of the other works.

Thanks for reading and if you believe you have feedback or you think there are more life lessons to be learned from Konrad Zuse, please add your feedback and thoughts in the comments below.