Speedcoding: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:14, 24 July 2014

Revision as of 05:00, 8 January 2015

Line 20:

}}

'''Speedcoding''' or '''Speedcode''' was the first higher-level language created for an [[IBM]] computer.<ref name="ibmj"> {{cite journal |author= F. E. Allen |title=The History of Language Processor Technology in IBM |journal=IBM Journal of Research and Development |volume=25 |issue=5 |date= September 1981 |pages= 535–548 |doi= 10.1147/rd.255.0535 }}</ref> The language was developed by [[John Backus]] in 1953 for the [[IBM 701]] to support computation with [[floating point| floating point numbers]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists |last=Shasha |first=Dennis |author2=Cathy Lazere |year=1998 |publisher=Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. |___location=New York |isbn=0-387-98269-8 }}</ref>

The idea arose from the difficulty of programming the [[IBM SSEC]] machine when Backus was hired to calculate astronomical positions in early 1950.<ref>{{cite web |title= Oral History of John Backus |author= Interviewed by Grady Booch |date= September 5, 2006 |work= Reference number: X3715.2007 |publisher= [[Computer History Museum]] |url= http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Backus_John/Backus_John_1.oral_history.2006.102657970.pdf |accessdate= April 23, 2011 }}</ref>