A brief history of programming...

In the beginning, there was nothing.

Then someone invented one. And then

someone else invented zero. And everyone

said, "Wow, this is useless." Then about

20,000 years later, electricity shows

up. Electricity likes on and off. On is

one, off is zero. And suddenly we're

programming stuff. They say, "What if we

combine 1 and zero?" So they do. 1 0 1 0

1 0 1 0. Nobody knows what it means, but

it feels important. 1936 rolls around.

This guy defines what computable even

means. He goes on to crack the Nazi

Enigma machine to save the war for

Britain, but he's way too gay, so they

throw him in prison. The war is over,

and people realize computing machines

are pretty useful. They use vacuum tubes

and punch cards to represent ones and

zeros. They call each number a bit or a

binary number. It's how computers think.

They don't understand words, they

understand voltage. And then someone had

the idea, what if we take eight bits to

represent a regular number? Everyone

agrees. And now we can count to 255.

Then this guy says, dudes, let's call

this eight pack of bits a bite. a bite

with the Y to make it sound futuristic

and cool. And now people start arranging

ones and zeros all day to make machines

do math. And they realize this sucks. So

this woman shows up and says,

"Absolutely not." And invents assembly

language. Instead of writing 101 1 0 0,

you write. It still sucks, but now it

sucks less. Then another woman shows up

and completely changes everything. Grace

says, "What if computers could

understand something like English?"

Everyone laughs. They tell her to go

make a sandwich. So she does and calls

it a compiler. A compiler is like a

translator. You give it readable code,

it thinks really hard, then gives you a

new file. That file is machine code, a

bunch of ones and zeros again. The

computer loves it. You never look at it

again. And this leads to the first

highle programming languages. Before

trans for scientists, the cobalt for

businesses and government that somehow

half of global finance still runs on

cobalt. No one knows how. No one touches

it. Meanwhile, this weird guy creates

this weird language called lisp.

Everything is a list. Code is data. Data

is code. It doesn't even need a

compiler. Instead, it uses an

interpreter that runs code line by line

on the fly until the code stops working.

Wild stuff. And it also unlocks a new

superpower called garbage collection,

where the programmer no longer even

needs to think about memory. After

everyone does LSD in the late '60s,

things start to get weird. In the early

'7s, Dystra says, "Go-to statements are

trash and everybody agrees that we need

readable, maintainable code." Dennis

invents C. The C is fast. C is powerful.

The C lets you shoot yourself in the

foot with military precision. But C lets

you talk directly to memory, which means

power. Dennis has a buddy named Ken.

Together, they use C to make Unix. It's

an operating system. It's not the first

one, but it's the only one that still

matters. Instead of one giant machine,

we get small programs. They each do one

thing well and pipe data to each other

like CD to change directories and ls to

list out its contents. The idea infects

everything and now the command line

becomes religion among programmers.

Everything was perfect. Then this guy

comes along and says, "What if C," but

with more abstraction. And so he adds a

plus to it. And then another plus. And

now all of a sudden we have objects,

classes, inheritance, and arguments that

never end. Programmers love complexity.

So C++ takes over the world. Games,

browsers, databases, engines are all

built with C++ even today, and people

still can't stop arguing about it. Now

the year is 1982. Every nerd owns a

Commodore 64 while learning how to code

in basic while listening to Thriller on

a record player. Soon Turbo Pascal shows

up. Like C, it has a compiler but also a

full integrated development environment.

It sells like Thriller, but many new

programming languages are hitting the

scene. ADA is created for the military,

Erlang for the phone system, Mat Lab,

Pearl, Objective C, and more. Oh, and

don't forget Small Talk, one of the

first pure objectoriented languages

where everything is an object. Everybody

forgets about it, but everybody copies

it. Then the '9s happen and three

philosophies collide. Guido says code

should read like thoughts. is so we get

Python where readability matters and

indentation is law. But James says

program should run everywhere is so we

get Java where you write once and debug

everywhere. Java doesn't just ship a

language but also a revolutionary

virtual machine which is like a fake

computer that runs in the real computer

and compiles Java to bite code instead

of machine code. It's basically cheating

to get Java to run everywhere. But then

Brendan comes along and invents

JavaScript in 10 days to make buttons

animate in the browser. It was supposed

to be small. It was supposed to be

temporary. It now runs servers, phones,

databases, and spacecraft. No one

planned this. No one wanted this. Then

the worldwide web happened. The experts

said it would be no more important than

the fax machine. But billions of

websites were created anyway. Most of

them with PHP. Nobody likes to talk

about PHP, only JavaScript frameworks.

Wars were fought over JavaScript

frameworks like jQuery, Moo Tools,

React, Angular, View, Spelt, and

thousands more. Many people died from

unrelated causes. But they didn't die

for nothing. Throughout the 2000s,

languages became cleaner and more

elegant. The Swift fixed Objective C.

Cotlin fixed Java. The TypeScript fixed

JavaScript. Go fix C. Rust fix C. No,

Zigfix C. JK C is still the best. In

2020, the world is beautiful and

perfect. But programmers are cool,

programmers are rich, and programmers

are highly desirable mates. Even Fire

was making good videos without any AI

slop. But then the asteroid hit. Someone

says, "What if we can get statistics to

write code?" But first it's

autocomplete, then llinters, then

refactors, then whole functions, then

entire full stack applications. And

suddenly everybody says programming is

dead. But here's the secret. Typing code

was never the job. The job was thinking.

Thinking with your brain. But

programming isn't dead. It just keeps

changing the keyboard and it always

will. And one tool that's changed the

way I use the keyboard comes from Jet

Brains, the sponsor of today's video.

Their AI coding agent, Juny, is built

directly into the Jet Brains IDE, which

lets it understand the structure and

history of your entire codebase. I've

been using Juny on my own side project

to build a custom voice recorder. And

although it may be a little bit slower

than some other codegen tools, it's much

better at context and accuracy,

especially when working with this

complex waveform data. I also appreciate

the built-in AI chat where you can ask

deeper questions about the code it's

writing and the logic behind it. Juny

just added support for Grock, Gemini,

and all the other major coding models.

And you can try it out today for free

using the link below. to thanks for

watching and I will see you in the next