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New Hampshire Installs First Historical Marker to Honor Computer Programming:
New Hampshire has installed what appears to be the first historical highway marker honoring computer programming, according to the Concord Monitor. The new sign honors BASIC, Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, a programming language that was invented at Dartmouth College in 1964.
The sign came about after Concord Monitor journalist David Brooks noted in a column that the state’s 255 historical markers honored things like bridges and historical figures, but that there was “distressingly little celebration of New Hampshire’s technical and scientific accomplishments.” He went on to advocate for the state to install a sign for BASIC and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System — a precursor to the internet. “They matter at least as much as a covered bridge,” Brooks wrote.
Two mathematicians developed the language: John G. Kemeny, and Thomas E. Kurtz, who wanted to create an easily-accessible programming language for students, and Brooks notes that BASIC “has probably has done more to introduce more people to computer programming than anything ever created.”
Thanks to their efforts, your humble scribe was first able to attempt his hand at programming back oh so many years ago. BASIC whetted my appetite and from there I learned Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL, and a whole host of other languages and assemblers. How many other Soylentils "cut their teeth" on BASIC and where did it lead you?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stretch611 on Monday June 17 2019, @10:37PM
When I was in middle school, I was amazed and entrance the first time I saw a computer running "Lemonade Stand." It was a commodore pet computer at the time and I saw some older students stop it while it was running and generate a program listing. I knew that I wanted to program from that point on.
Shortly after, I got a commodore vic-20 for christmas... with a bonus, a 16k memory expansion as well. I still remember starting up the Vic20 and it stating "3583 bytes free." (when the 16k cartridge was removed.)
I learned BASIC while typing in the programs from "COMPUTE!" and "COMPUTE!'s Gazette." I even learned assembly language shortly after on my own while still in high school. (on the Vic20's 6502 processor of course.)
In high school, I yawned while they taught the rest of the class BASIC. They also taught LOGO (Very simple pen graphics scripting language), and Pascal.
In college, I had another Pascal class and also learned Fortran and Assembler for the Vax-11.
I later ended up at a secondary school, the chubb institute... a programming school for business. There I learned COBOL, JCL and Assembler H and was even introduced to DB2 and CICS.(The school was mainframe orientated.) I still remember all the dumbfounded faces during the assembler class... No one knew what the hell the instructor was talking about until the learned about 90% of the course material was covered and then it just started to click. Other students in the class knew I understood it all already and constantly badgered me to help them with Assembly, and I had to tell them they need to learn all the basics before any of it makes sense and they went crazy until it clicked.
Once I had my first legit job I actually had on the job training for extensive SQL/DB2 and CICS and slowly worked away from mainframes and learned C/C++, Java, HTML, Javascript, CSS, Coldfusion, and Python. (and I'm probably forgetting a few.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P