Take a language like Java. How was it originally created? I can’t wrap my head around how someone invented a computer language to run without having some “prior” language that it allows the first lines to function. Is it just Java all the way down, like someone wrote a single line of Java and then every other line was built on that?
What about the first computer language? What was the basis that that functioned on?
Thanks for any help, I hope that was phrased in a mildly intelligible way.
Edit; I’m trying to think of it like human language: at some point there was a first “word” spoken by someone and understood by another and from there the structure started to be born. What were the first “words” on a computer that led to where we are now?
In: Technology
The very first “words” on a computer were some poor, patient soul litterally plucking in every 1 and 0 by hand. They’d do this by baking it straight into the circuitry rather than programming it with a keyboard, because, well, how would a keyboard even work if programming doesn’t exist?
People still do this all the time, by the way. A common tool that lets you experiment rapidly is called a “breadboard”, which lets you plug and unplug wires and simple chips to create complex circuits.
After the first literal hard-coded computers were in place, they were extended to be more modular and accept arbitrary input from users via input peripherals, that could then be run as new code. Everything snowballed from there.
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