The First Programming Languages: Crash Course Computer Science #11

[@OceanBagel]

This is seriously the best Crash Course series ever. You took an incredibly complex topic and explained it clearly and concisely. Keep doing what you do!

[@paololuckyluke2854]

OceanBagel Without taking anything from this one, which is truly excellent, I’ve seen many episodes from the philosophy one,and can say that is excellent, too.

[@YeoYeo]

6:37 I feel it's important to point out something that might confuse beginners. In Python and many other languages, *the equals sign does not means equals.* It means, "take the thing on the right of the equals sign and put it in the thing on the left of the equals sign. Or take A+B and put it in C.

[@TopHatProductions115]

Pikalolz the assignment operator

[@farmingsimulator3721]

Also python is a scripting language too.... A few little mistakes in an otherwise good video

[@humm535]

C : Integer := A + B Or something like this...

[@peka2478]

a simple example: A=A+1; Makes sense in code. And literally nowhere else. Reread and rewatch the material until you understand that ^^

[@m0st4fabideer14]

@@peka2478 Or you can type A +=1, It 'll mean the same thing.

[@verdatum]

Plain old English would be such an _awful_ programming language. That thing is crazy ambiguous. Regardless, man, this series has been consistently fantastic. I'm a software engineer with 10+ years experience, and I haven't felt the urge to grab a pitchfork yet. This show is saying all the really important stuff about CS, and compressing it into something super information-dense. This is the heart-and-soul of why Crash Course is amazing and valuable to society as a whole; if you'll permit me to get wishy-washy and idealistic for just a moment.

[@jmiquelmb]

verdatum I think that trying to make a computer understand the logic behind the word "literally" would make it explode

[@codinggrunt1295]

verdatum Hey are you still a software engineer? I started a new youtube channel and was wondering if you don't mind if I interview you. Ask questions like what is you job like etc.

[@powderedwater4742]

lol software _engineer_ computer science, hardware, mechanical and electrical engineer are way better. so bow down peasant

[@lincolnsand5127]

Python is plain English

[@powderedwater4742]

@@lincolnsand5127 not really

[@MetalStorm66]

Being a self taught coder with a bachelors in business management, how software ran on hardware was always a mystery to me. Sometimes assuming it's some kind of black magic! Thanks to all of you from Crash Course for enlightening me and other like me, who never really understood the role/existence of memory registries and operation codes!!! Can't wait for the next episode!

[@simbaonsteroids8836]

Raphael Kottakal you can use your new found knowledge to optimize your code!

It is really not all that difficult once you get the concept; however, it requires a different thought process. Practice makes perfect. :D

[@victormgv]

Raphael Kottakal : Soon you'll understand why C and C++ guys are always rolling our eyes at everyone's *tight & clean" code. Maybe even you would start joining in when two OGs start arguing over ifs vs switch statements. LOL 😂 This course is sorely needed for all AppDev departments! Good for you for taking the time to learn *what* your code is doing at the hardware level. Honestly this quick overview of the practical aspects of computer science is all that is needed to make tight faster code.

[@hakunamatata3520]

I recommend you to read "How does it know?" Book by J. Clark Scott

[@sanankhan6812]

At 10:14 , the ChatGPT can now translate plain english to a code. Something that was fiction 5 years ago has become the ultimate reality now.

[@fen4554]

huge bonus points for adding the correct Morse code for the closed captions.

[@beretperson]

Wait, we have records of how many goats some sumerian guy had, but not of A-0 code? Wow.

[@hanro50]

Isn't humanity great!

[@tuckertechnolord6126]

Mateo Gg well, A-0 wasn't literally written in stone.

[@jonatansan01]

8:17 "the high-level, easy to use, COBOL" *Laugh in pain and sorrow*

[@DavidChipman]

For it;s time though....

[@simbaonsteroids8836]

jonatansan01 something something pointers something something Python dev something something they're magic

[@UteChewb]

I had a lecturer who claimed he had once written a BASIC compiler in COBOL. All I could think was ... WHY?

[@silverharloe]

so he could stop writing COBOL and write BASIC instead?

[@iampuff7]

the world was a dark place back then if they considered COBOL as easy

[@osgnuru]

I am watching this with my children so they know a little about what I do at work. This is a great series.

[@anthonypaul6148]

that's so awesome :D

[@Deveyus]

My dad got to learn from Grace Hopper when he was in the navy. Very few people have earned his respect through his life, and she was one of them. Now I follow him as a programmer. It's amazing how short the world of computers is.

[@bee5120]

That's amazing! I wish to learn from a prodigy too. My childhood idol programmer is Bill Gates.

[@firenationfiles2063]

Sometimes programming languages make more sense to me than *"English"...*

[@StarSong936]

Admiral Hopper is one of my childhood hero's. I also admire Lady Ada of Lovelace. Both have made significant contributions to computer science which are still in use today. There is a video of Admiral Hopper in an interview with David Letterman which can give you some insight into her personality and sense of humor. I recommend watching it. She is hilarious. I wish I could have met her in person while she still lived.

[@codeChris]

As a self-taught dev I really appreciate the work put into this. I am always thinking what video to best reference for what exactly is happening when you punch a bunch of code on the keyboard. Keep it up :)

[@lambusaab]

"typical lazy people always designing their own programming language" Lol

[@SomethingNick]

This series has lined up perfectly to my computer architecture course at uni here in Australia, we just started assembly so it's cool having a more visual representation

[@DAMN__________]

Im studying electrical engineering , but your videos keeps me in the up to date with computer scientist , very straight forward description , and very helpful thank you CRASH

[@JT-nq9vh]

This is one of the best series I have ever seen

[@lkgpuanimho0349]

10:09 Fast forward, a few more years, it is not science friction anymore

[@ivancito7790]

It's funny. Previously, the increase in levels of abstraction only made things more obtuse and difficult to fully grasp/keep track of, but for the very first time, it's like a breath of fresh air, things finally start to click and make more sense. The feeling is similar to reaching the peak of a mountain and seeing the clear skies and breathing a deep breath of fresh air after trudging through all the difficult and overly complicated nonsense. This was a good video.

[@CollinPlaysTTRPGs]

I like how her face lights up when she talks about computers. She really enjoys it.

[@captainzoltan7737]

Not a programmer just a 3d artist with an amateur interest in programming. Been binging these videos while I'm sick . Definitely don't understand all of it but I think I get the general gist of stuff so far.

[@asp-uwu]

Let's look at a compiler! *Uses an interpreted language to demonstrate* JK, Great show :P

[@simbaonsteroids8836]

Eric Pratt shoulda used C or C++ or at least a language that compiles to byte-code

[@Alex2Buzz]

Python (or, at least, CPython, the standard implementation) does compile to bytecode. It just does so quietly.

[@newbprogramming5043]

C# dotnet core :D

[@DearLuck]

You can compile Python to machine code. Just google "compile python to machine code". Welcome to the world of programming, where you can never be sure you are right!

Interpreted languages make it really difficult to bork your machine! But as they say, it is bad luck to say "Good luck." That is why we now say, "Crash and burn!" I remember working in embedded systems in college where the professor humored us by comparing what we were doing with Pic RISC chips compared to Arduino users, "Professors which use Arduino say it is fun to blow-up transistors and caps!"

[@rabbytca]

In the late 70's when colleges and universities had computers by IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation that required dedicated air conditioned rooms to process Fortran and Cobol on punch cards or dumb terminals our high school managed to scrap together the $10k required to buy an MCM900. It fit on an audio visual cart and ran a programming language called APL (A Programming Language). Two 8 inch floppy drives gave it an additional 8k of virtual RAM.

[@ShoFox]

I never understood how a programming language actually works. I was always like "but how does the system know?" Now I do, and it was explained so easily that I understood it first time!

[@golikovks]

Before watching the series, I thought I had the problem of not starting programming EARLIER. Now, I realize it is a good thing that I didn't. For my mental health, especially :D

[@gwgux]

I like how you highlighted Grace Hopper's contribution to programming with A-0. I think she gets overshadowed a lot by Fortran and others so kudos to you for that. :)

[@JoshPowlison]

Looking forward to getting more into this series! :D As a programmer, I've heard pieces of this, but all of the Crash Course series I've done always do a great job of getting great info and putting it together in an easy-to-understand way. Already learned a lot I didn't know. Thank you!

[@RyannonBarrNeo]

this series is simply awesome! I have learned so much!

[@pritamkarmokar3674]

Thank you so much for these videos !! Makes me wish going back to my engineering days and start over again with a new less lazy, less ignorant perspective. Thank you very much for reminding me my love and passion for technology. (:

[@supersnackbros2423]

"Not to be confused with Let it Go and Pokemon Go." How do you do, fellow kids?

[@mohammedjawahri5726]

Supersnackbros touchè

[@ProdScum]

shut up nerd furry

[@GavinŚ363]

She said "Programming with your natural language, by just talking to the machine is not possible, and is just science fiction unfortunately." I'm from the future, 2023 to be exact, and boy do I have news for you! Now if I was back they're in the past with her, I wouldn't believe it to be possible either but, it is now possible to code machines with your voice by just speaking to it! And I believe by next year any and all coding will be done simply by telling it, in your natural language, what to do. There will still be a whole range of different coding languages still in use, needed to accomplish different things, but they will be in use on the backend instead, not by humans but basically becoming part of a new master compiler system!

[@jmiquelmb]

And then there's the original Game Boy. Which had to be written in assembly due to how shitty its hardware was, to make it more efficient. That makes me wonder what kind of graphics could you handle on modern computers if a crazy team of programmers with infinite resources decided to write something like Crysis 3 in assembly

[@BosonCollider]

Modern game graphics run on GPU's, and programming a GPU in assembly sounds... horrible. Especially considering that the instruction set isn't even open source for many graphics cards.

[@isaacingleby8771]

A lot of effort is being put into making game engines "closer to the metal". Doom 2016 on Vulcan is a fantastic example of what optimised engines make possible, and I wonder how far it can be taken.

[@AlexPadula]

Well now a days compilers tend to produce more efficient assembly code than manual programming... This is also one of the resons learning assembly is a lot harder to justify these days.

[@BandanaDrummer95]

You get a good taste of things written with low-level programming with Apple computers (especially compared to the same computer running Bootcamp).

[@flyingllama87]

How's/Why that? Not nay saying just curious.

[@kolt9051]

Whoever writes the script does a fantastic job! Super easy to understand, thank​ you!

[@rebeccaadamson5972]

"Not to be confused with Let It Go, or Pokemon Go" the throwaway gags in these are hilarious!

[@janetlim]

Come after chat gpt is released

[@vvekmathew]

Damn... This video is so good. Almost all my doubts about programming languages are cleared, thanks to this.

[@saskiavanhoutert6081]

Carrie Ann you go very fast, but it is a complete history of computation that you give and to me you are somehow an engineer, thanks and kind regards.

[@tolgaoy7957]

I have disabled my add blocker for this channel, you are making a great job. Thank you all!

[@Albert10101000]

Anyone else love the little "New Level of Abstraction" bit that Carrie-Ann almost always says? It's pretty much like this series' "Except..The Monguls" bit. It definitely makes this series memorable!

[@sum124get2]

Carie-Ann is absolutely star-struck!

[@millthorn]

I wish I had this excellent video when I learnt 68k assembler in the1980s. SEKA Assembler on the Amiga.

[@unconteur]

GAH This is the video I would have needed back in highschool while failing the programming portion of my computer class... I was too obsessed trying to understand how you could use English words to tell a computer what to do, rather than spending that energy learning the programming language. Thanks CrashCourse!

[@erikziak1249]

This is the best series. I really like the presenter, she knows what she is talking about and has a pleasant voice too. Sorry Phil, Astronomy is on 2nd place in my favorites list now.

[@wingpoo]

3:00 no... no one guess it was an assembler

[@cgpirre]

Cobol did unspeakable things to my blossoming interest in programming. I've never been the same.

[@peterzhang9492]

good job, whished my CS teacher in high school explained things better, would have been a programmer by now

[@angeldude101]

You had a CS teacher in high school? Jealous.

[@jasonz8635]

HAVE a CS teacher (well web design so only HTML and CSS q.q) in middle school.

[@shubhankardasgupta4777]

@@angeldude101 me too...

[@dearone1]

I just wanted to say thanks for making this series. It's so bloody interesting, my brain hurts but the pain is good ;) Instead of determining that computers are magic, I can instead conclude that electricity is magic. Can't wait for the next episode!!

[@spartathecoder4134]

Which if you do a physics course, you will have to say that something deeper is magic. Level of Abstractions everywhere! Cool!

[@aniruddhkeskar286]

the videos present some of the extraordinary details about computing in a simplistic way but i think i would appreciate if there is any way we can revise all that was taught from beginning. Tests or Assessments would be a great way to start with. I request you to provide short tests over the topics. Best Of Luck. Long live this channel.

[@Erobazai]

Why does programmers have glasses? Because they don't C# :P

[@TopHatProductions115]

Heijmdal XD

[@jeremybailey262]

The real version of that joke is "Why do Java developers wear glasses? Because they can't C#"

[@kjell159]

@@jeremybailey262 There is only one language that makes you able to C.

[@jeremybailey262]

@@kjell159 lol That's a good one

[@goldenheart1667]

hahhaahah

[@davexlp]

Thank you so much for such an amazing course, I might actually be able to successfully graduate from computer science because of you. Keep up the good work.

[@6san6sei6]

love this series! awesome as always

[@eldersprig]

The book 'From NAND to Tetris' covers abstraction at multiple levels, expecially how they hardware gets to the software.

[@professorclup1082]

10:08 ChatGPT is doing something similar

[@Christophe_L]

I just want to say, for what it's worth: this girl is awesome. I was a bit uncertain at first, as you always are about new Crash Course presenters after Human Geographygate, but I love her now.

[@thehanke]

The utter joy of feeling your brain when it tickles, because what you know is polished with something n! times better. This is truly beautiful. Cheers for making and sharing this.

[@iluan_]

I hope we get a bit into hardware description languages like Verilog, System Verilog, AHDL and VHDL.

[@HolyManta]

I love this channel, I freaking love this playlist, and I love curiosity stream now too :3

[@mourneris]

I love the random oscilloscope in the back with a sinusoid signal.

[@niclaskron3384]

this series is lovely, keep up the good work :D

[@armorsmith43]

If you are curious how a higher-level programming language works below its shiny abstraction layer, I recommend the book Ruby under a Microscope. It focuses on ruby, but the concepts are broadly applicable.

[@PreeMarket]

Such a great video! Made a very complex concept so easy to get. Thanks CC!

[@MasqueradeCrew]

I can see speaking a program into a computer. "Draw a circle, medium. Move it to the right. Fill it with red." Such an operation would require specific syntax, which is kind of what projects like MIT's Scratch is leaning toward. There's very little coding involved. Or at least the code is represented in different ways. Reminds me of the holodeck from Star Trek. You speak to a computer. The computer shows you something based upon your instruction. You then modify the instruction. We are a long way from this being mainstream, but I can see it.

[@lapindurand778]

Understanding the basis of computing makes me realized how crazy advanced are computers.

I remember in OS class at SDSU we had to write a shell program as a final project in C. A shell program is a very primitive OS without a GUI, much like how DOS was. I was exhausted, and rather than take a break, I decided to clean some superfluous stuff from the directory and typed "rm *". Everything was gone! It was the night before the whole thing was due. I rewrote the entire program from memory! There were no errors, but I was not able to get extra credit for piping more than three instructions at a time.

[@zakunknown9737]

I love this series :D keep the videos coming ;) Nice work!!!

[@calabiyou]

This is awesome. Can't believe I just discovered this channel.

[@Breepable17]

I get a strong Bioshock vibe from the level of abstraction clip. Also, fantastic course, after a few more videos I'll be starting a C++ course!

[@loselmatos4453]

I would pay good money for this. Thanks for offering such great content for free

[@MrGustavoselem]

i like carrie anne because she always have a smile in her face when talking.

[@angeldude101]

"... and Go. Not to be confused with 'Let it go' and 'Pokemon Go.'" As someone who likes Go a lot, I'm both insulted and amused.

[@jmiquelmb]

angeldude101 You like to go where? Oh, you mean Go. It's basically chinese checkers right? (shots fired)

[@angeldude101]

Go is basically like Chinese checkers. Kind of how Chess is like Tic-Tak-Toe.

[@itsskazza]

your video's are good, you are actually teaching 😇

[@christian37ism]

Thankful to finally understand this after watching this video a few times.

[@gescisl]

This episode was very difficult to me as it doesn't go in depth on how early assemblers and compilers worked. Love the series

[@TayoTheT1000]

I would love to see an episode on functional vs object oriented languages. And how those languages have very different perspectives much like our spoken languages.

[@vancemccarthy2554]

What I really want to know is has this course covered how 1's and 0's were assigned instructions? Not to mention what a brilliant idea it was to use 1's 0's in the first place.

[@smyasir0]

second video in the series !

[@apbosh1]

Very good video love your style I'll be looking out for others. Thanks this was just what I was looking for a quick but useful explanation of programming history.

[@codeman99-dev]

9:38 I know this is a high level list, but I find it strange that Javascript was left out. Side note, *Not to be confused with "Let it Go" and "Pokemon Go"*. Um... Go? The most important board game in history?

[@Lugmillord]

She clearly meant the japanese number 5 (五 go)

[@mellowdrifter]

Golang

[@MichaelSHartman]

And we got shown who the Alpha was.

[@argus1393]

I was a fairly good system 370 assembler programmer at a little place called Bell Telephone Labratories. Best job of my career.

[@DiogoVKersting]

2 relatively new languages I'm excited about are Elixir and Rust. Elixir seems interesting to build parallel fault-tolerant systems. Rust for safe low-level programming.

[@jondreauxlaing]

I'm excited for the language wars after WebASM is widely distributed. The web front-end will be forever changed. I frankly don't think Javascript will fare very well once it has to compete with more rigorously designed languages. I could see Python coming in as a big contender. Clojure as well. Elm is pretty exciting. I imagine Go will probably fare pretty well too. I think Java will get some play, but its verbose nature will probably make it fall out of favor for the web. I don't know too much about C#, but I think it will probably do pretty well too. Rust will probably be an early adopter, but I think its learning curve regarding ownership and lifetimes will make it niche in the web.

[@CrunchyMcDugals]

Javascript is actually super practical to work with. It is fundamentally different from more traditional OOP languages, but there's nothing I can express in java or python that I can't in javascript. Sometimes the nature of javascript allows for more concise code, especially if you have to be flexible about what kind of data a piece of code can accept. It's not always the right tool, but most of the time it can be. I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon.

[@jondreauxlaing]

I write in Javascript everyday, and I agree it's surprisingly powerful for what it is, I'm just saying that part of its success was due to not having any competition in the web front-end sphere. It'll take a while to phase out, but I think it eventually will.

[@amansinghbhadauria2818]

I feel so bad that I didn't know anything about the marvellous Grace hopper She built the first compiler and a simpler HLL and laid to the foundation of basically all the other ones. I don't understand why is there nothing named after her, why doesn't the school teach about her?

[@PatrickAllenNL]

Finally an episode I can follow very easily without hurting my brain

[@a_keysmash8258]

thank you so much, this is very interesting and useful!!

[@douglasthomson2986]

These are very good Carrie-Anne. Well done!

[@Beryllahawk]

This series continues to be consistently excellent. I may be an "old dog" but I'm not feeling a bit left behind or confused. Thanks y'all :)

[@orion10x10]

I just signed up for Curiosity stream ty crashcourse.

[@jarelnomeh2345]

The painstaking effort the producers went to, in order to find so many "diverse" engineer pictures, is hilarious.

[@christian37ism]

because otherwise it would be an actual representation of the industry at the time?

[@kensmith5694]

You missed out the reason they are called "compilers". It was because it was assumed that the compiler would put together existing subroutines. It was from the same means as to compile a dictionary. The rate of real advancement of programming languages has slowed of late. Mostly new languages are shuffling around existing ideas and in many cases copying old mistakes as though they were good ideas. I will use an example: If you want to deal with your location as one variable, you need to be able to hold 3 numbers in a variable rather than just one. We usually call this sort of thing an array of numbers. When the C language was created, they made it so that if you declared an array: int A[3]; What actually happened was a place in memory for 3 integers was allocated and "A" was made to be the location of the first element. Thus you never really had an array variable but rather had a pointer to the array as your variable. With simple variables "X=Y" would copy what is in Y into X. With "B=A" for the arrays, you might expect 3 numbers to be copied but actually you would just end up with two pointers to the same location in memory.

[@jakec5618]

So how does the compiler work ? For example, how does it take higher level language and convert it into binary. ? Thanks

[@InquisitorLP]

Im pretty dissapointent that you have not mentioned Konrad Zuse, he built the first programmabel computer, the Z3, and he also designed the first programming language, Plankalkül.

[@xureality]

The baby ran it's first program in 1948, the Z3 in 1941, so the honor of being the first programmable computer goes to the Z3. However the Z3 lacked conditional branching which means that it's not turing complete. and baby doesn't own that title either because ENIAC beat it by 2 years (even though the only way way to program ENIAC was by patch cables).

[@terryosborne2964]

Going back into computer history there were so many people involved it's sometime hard to say who did this or that first. Hell people still debate on who created the first video game. Oh wait isn't there a crash course video series about that. One thing I learned about computer history, it's complicated. Also well as far has the general public really only knows two people and we all know who they're, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. For me that just sad there are so many people that don't get recognized for what they did. But I guess that goes with any innovated field.

[@Ed-quadF]

Nasaq Licos i agree and noticed all but a couple of pictures were of women and blacks, which skews historical reality. PBS has a political narrative to change history vis-à-vis identity. I think most people can see through the that. Nevertheless, this series is pretty good. (and PBS wonders why they're getting defunded.)

[@terryosborne2964]

Hell some of the Soviet Union's innovation and advancements technologically never really get's acknowledged here in the United States. I guess the same goes for Nazi Germany (besides Rockets) We all know why? Nazis did with they did and Soviet Union being evil commies. Both had role in history in some innovation and advancements led to the world we live in today. US Centric POV will always be skewed in that way. Most Nations do this anyways. At the same time United States is the one took some of these ideas and innovation improved upon them a thousand fold. This comment thread on and on about people not mentioned in this video or even recognized from Computer Science History. This Stuff is not taught in primary education Elementary or High School so what do we expect?

[@benanderson89]

Whilst machines of WWII were indeed "programmable", it was in a limited set of parameters (Z3 was for wing flutter, Colossus MK1 was for Enigma), so it was "programmable" in the sense of being able to change its input values. Z3 also isn't as widely recognised because it was electro mechanical, rather than fully electronic. The first fully programmable general purpose computer, IIRC, was the Manchester, as you could make it do anything, even play music (it crashed whilst playing said music, but it did).

[@firebucket8203]

I hope they will do music theory soon or maybe geometry

[@ArticBlueFox96]

I agree with music theory, but I am hoping for linguistics, engineering, and logic (they may have already covered this is Philosophy - I haven't watched that one yet). I am happy that they are doing mythology and film history right now.

[@tunAliUTube]

It's 7:45AM in Malaysia. I should get out and goes to work but here I am.

[@JohnRaschedian]

Thank you Carrie Anne!

[@avi12]

0:34 And JavaScript, which is one of the most popular programming languages today, as it powers the front-end web, and more.

[@Marcos-qv3mz]

Thank you very much for this series!!!. Keep doing it please!!

[@dixie_rekd9601]

awwwwww... I can't wait till next week 😯

[@Dedsilareva]

10:11 Telling your google home or alexa to add, multiply etc. numbers can be a early form of this.

[@OldieBugger]

My adventure with FORTRAN was a very short one. I started with the textbook, took the first sample program and compiled it in the university DEC-20 computer and tried to run it. It crashed. I checked the bloody whole of 3 lines of code many times and found no errors. Finally I threw that book to the trashcan and took some other language instead, it might've been COBOL, can't remember exactly.

[@mostafaassem6805]

I wish I had professors like you in the uni..

[@prashantchavan789]

so beautiful explanation , felt like listening to angel

[@andreranulfo-dev8607]

2nd time watching the whole series!!!!