Code, glorious code!

Who doesn’t love technology?! We take for granted all the amazing technology we have at our fingertips, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, smart watches. We forget that all these devices would not work without that little sprinkle of magic. No, not electricity, but coding. It is a tough job, but someone has to do it.  To entice you further into our programming love language, here are a few interesting facts about the history of the coding technology we use day to day.

What came first, the internet or the coding? – The only legitimate child of Lord and Lady Byron, Ada Lovelace, is considered by many to be the world’s first coder, having had work published in 1843. A whole 240 years before the official birthday of the internet as we know it today. Ada was encouraged by her mother to pursue her interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from following in her father’s footsteps of total wild abandon!

Do you speak Code? There are quite a few programming languages to choose from actually. In fact, there are over 700 computer programming languages out there.  We have all heard HTML, haven’t we? But what about Javascript, Python, PHP, Cobol, Ruby, Basic, Java, C, C++, C#. When are we going to find the time to learn all of those?

Coding can have it’s issues too. A bug in the code, a popular term to used to describe a coding issue. Although you may be led to believe the old wives tale that it was coined when Grace Hopper found a dead moth in Harvard’s Mark II computer, it has, in fact, been used since 1873. Thomas Eddison used it to abstractly describe a flaw in technical system, his simple variation on the popular “Fly in the ointment” turn of phrase. A  fact useful for all those pub quiz fanatics.

I’m not going to get hacked, am I? An all too common problem, the dreaded virus message.   “I’M THE CREEPER. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!” – This was the message displayed by the first computer virus, created in 1971 by Bob Thomas to see if he could prove that the Theory of Self Reproducing Automata, published in 1949, was at all possible. It appears so.

The Father of Spam.  Not the meat variety, but spam emails. We all get them, all the time. Who was responsible for this? Gary Thuerk, that’s who.  A marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp, Gary sent the world’s first unsolicited e-mail on the 1st of May, 1978. Of the 400 people sent the email, imagine, only a handful complained! One of those complaints happened to mention that the spam had taken up all their disk space and shut down their entire computer system, giving birth to the bane of the technical world.

Technology can’t last forever, right? Remember Y2K, Prince always said you had to party like it’s 1999.. just in case.  As the Fin de Siecle crept up on us, the world spent an estimated $500 billion to prevent the end of life on earth as we know it caused by “The Millenium Bug”.  A bug in the coding system was going to cause havoc. They said that planes would fall from the sky, and nuclear reactors would go into meltdown. Money well spent then, I guess, seeing as we are still here, coding and using that very same technology.

Go on then , one more fact.

Blink Blink. The average human blinks 20 times a minute, but this drops to a staggering 1 to 3 times every 60 seconds when we use our computers. So do yourself a favour,  give your eyes a break, you deserve it.

If you need help with any of the programming languages, why not contact us today and see what our wonderful coders could do for you and your website.