Computers need programming languages to function. That’s just a simple fact of life. However, these languages didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. They were developed by people for explicit purposes.

I was entering the miseries of seventh grade in the fall of 1980 when a friend dragged me into a dimly lit second-floor room. The school had recently installed a newfangled Commodore PET computer, a ...

This video is part of Electronic Design's 70th Anniversary series. This is a bit like Mel Brooks History of the World, Part I for programmers. I've been writing a number of articles and recording ...