100th anniversary of Konrad Zuse: creator of the first programming language

http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~zuse/Konrad_Zuse/

by mojuba • 16 years ago

15 21 16 years ago

user.cs.tu-berlin.de

buddycasino• 16 years ago

The name of said language being "Plankalkül". Which is the best name for a programming language. Ever.

("Plan Calculus" doesn't quite capture it)

eru4• 16 years ago

What makes you think so? Do you understand German in general?

phreeza2• 16 years ago

One shouldn't forget that he was a Nazi collaborator, used his skills to design bombs at Henschel among other things, and was financed by the Nazi regime right till the end of the war.

ErrantX4• 16 years ago

In fairness this represents him as a Nazi sympathiser etc. Which is somewhat unfair given his contribution:

IIRC he built computers to help guide the bombs, it's questionable where that becomes collaboration. From what I know, and from a quick refresh just now, there is nothing to suggest he was an out and out Nazi (or held any of their views).

(I think it is absolutely important to point out what you did; but I feel how you phrased it does him a little injustice :))

InclinedPlane2• 16 years ago

He worked for the German government during the reign of the Nazi party. He was a Nazi collaborator, period. You can make all the arguments you like that he wasn't an evil man, but you can't deny the fact that he worked for the Nazi's voluntarily.

david927• 16 years ago

He was a German during the war. There's a difference. I think you're thinking of people like Henry Ford and Thomas Watson (founder of IBM).

tomjen3• 16 years ago

There is also the difference that he properly didn't have much choice.

Thomas Watson on the other hand wasn't forced to make the punchcards the nazis used to run their census and kill the jews; he did it very, very willingly.

And Ford was given a fucking medal by Hitler.

phreeza2• 16 years ago

I disagree. There is a huge difference between not resisting the regime(which is what most Germans are guilty of) and working in the weapons industry, actively supporting the war effort.

cema• 16 years ago

Reminds me of one Werner von Braun, no?

Germany could be and would be the top scientific and technological nation of the XX century (space research, computers, etc etc) if they had not gone mad.

They have and it is not. Still we cannot discount its achievements even when they were used immorally or for immoral goals.

borisk3• 16 years ago

And you know this how? Developing computer and space industries takes a lot of resources, which Germany would not have had.

eru4• 16 years ago

> Germany could be and would be the top scientific and technological nation of the XX century (space research, computers, etc etc) if they had not gone mad.

Twice.

_b8r0• 16 years ago

Hmmm... In 1843 Ada Lovelace wrote a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with Babbage's Analytical Engine, and is generally considered to be the first computer program. Having said that the early 19th century Jacquard looms used punch cards for pattern instructions. Hollerith expanded on this with his 1890 census.

Zuse's language was never implemented in his lifetime. You could argue the same about Lovelace's algorithm, but not about Turing machines.

Zuse certainly developed the first programmable computer (albeit an electromechanical one, the first digital one was the UK Colossus a year later) and it's certainly an amazing achievement, but not the first programming languages.

ErrantX4• 16 years ago

Wikipedia has more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

It terms it the first high level non-von Neumann programming language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl

borisk3• 16 years ago

Actually Ada only published the code, which was earlier presented by Babbage (at his only public talk, in Italy).

qwzybug• 16 years ago

He was also one of the first to articulate the notion of the computable world. Wolfram and crew owe Zuse an intellectual debt (though as far as I know he doesn't appear in the footnotes to A New Kind of Science, big surprise).

Zuse should be a folk hero for anyone interested in the notion of a discrete, computable physics.

100th anniversary of Konrad Zuse: creator of the first programming language

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