Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician and writer, is often credited as the world's first computer programmer. She wrote algorithms for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine in the mid-19th century.
The computer used on the Apollo 11 mission that landed humans on the moon had less processing power than a modern smartphone. It had approximately 64 kilobytes of memory and a 2.048 MHz clock speed.
The term "bug" to describe a programming error was coined by Grace Hopper, a computer scientist, and Navy Rear Admiral. She found an actual moth stuck in a relay of the Mark II computer, causing a malfunction.
The "Hello, World!" program is a simple introductory program that displays the text "Hello, World!" It's often used to demonstrate the basic syntax of a programming language to beginners.
The programming language Python was named after the British comedy group Monty Python. The language's creator, Guido van Rossum, was a fan of the group's work.
The practice of explaining your code or problem to an inanimate object like a rubber duck is known as "rubber duck debugging." It often helps programmers identify issues and bugs in their code.
The open-source movement emphasizes making software's source code freely available to the public. It has led to the development of widely used projects like the Linux operating system and the Apache web server.
Despite the similar names, JavaScript and Java are entirely different languages. JavaScript was originally named "LiveScript," but its name was changed to capitalize on the popularity of Java.
A quine is a program that generates a copy of its own source code as its output. Creating quines is a fun challenge for programmers, requiring an understanding of self-replicating code.