From Mary Bellis,
Your Guide to Inventors.
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The first generation of codes used to program a computer, was called machine language or machine code, it is the only language a computer really understands, a sequence of 0s and 1s that the computer's controls interprets as instructions, electrically. The second generation of code was called assembly language, assembly language turns the sequences of 0s and 1s into human words like 'add'. Assembly language is always translated back into machine code by programs called assemblers.

The third generation of code, was called high level language or HLL, which has human sounding words and syntax (like words in a sentence). In order for the computer to understand any HLL, a compiler translates the high level language into either assembly language or machine code. All software programming languages need to be eventually translated into machine code for a computer to use the instructions they contain.

As the end user you do not see the code used to create computer software programs. However, you do use the results and the end products of today's software programming are soft programs that are easy to use by the consumer. Below you can find several software programs listed, each article discusses the history of software programming and the lives of the software programmers behind your favorite software programs.

Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering is the process of taking a software program apart and analyzing it with the intention to construct a new program that does the same thing without actually copying anything from the original and avoiding copyright or patent infringement.

Individual Software Programs

• Applications: Aldus Pagemaker, Trillian, Wordstar, Computer Chess, VisiCalc Spreadsheet
• Languages: ASCII, BASIC, FORTRAN, HTML, Java, JavaScript, Lingo (Used in Director and Shockwave)
• Operating Systems MS-DOS, Windows