SE assignment 4

How was the first compiler compiled?

Before going to the history let’s first understand the history of computer language. Earlier instructions were entered through front panel switches of computer. This was known as first generation language. Then in 1840’s Augusta Ada “The first programmer” suggested that a binary system should be used. From that time computer started understanding 0 & 1. Instructions given in this language is called machine language or assembly language first developed in the 1950s, which is nothing but symbolic representation of the numbers. Later it was found out that it was not user friendly & a slight error in the code use to be a huge setback for the programmers. Then something called compiler came into being.

As computer does not understand text language but only binary number, so a program was developed to convert the text language to machine language. This program is called compiler.

Towards the end of the 1950s, machine-independent programming languages were first proposed. Subsequently, several experimental compilers were developed. The A-0 system was the first compiler written by Grace Hopper, in 1952, for the  A-O programming language. The FORTRAN team led by John Backus at  IBM is generally credited as having introduced the first complete compiler, in 1957. It functioned more as a loader or linker than the modern notion of a compiler. Loader is the part of an operating system that is responsible for loading programs from executables into memory, preparing them for execution and then executing them. So we can say that the first compiler was developed with the help of assembly language. However these days we use Pascal, C ++,C etc.