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 5 or 6 when I got my first sense of the joys of computer programming. This was in the early 1980s, when few people had a computer. One day, my dad brought home a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, one of the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about innovation, the future of work and remote work. The future of programming and AI is more nuanced than headlines ...

For the rest of the history of modern programming languages -- because C was really just the beginning! -- check out the infographic below. You can click it to zoom in.

Although perhaps not as much of a household name as other pioneers of last century’s rapid evolution of computer hardware and the software running on them, Niklaus Wirth’s contributions puts him right ...

At Dartmouth, long before the days of laptops and smartphones, he worked to give more students access to computers. That work helped propel generations into a new world. By Kenneth R. Rosen Thomas E.