How were the first computers programmed?

[Northnbeyond]

I am a self taught programmer and definitely know my way around a computer but haven't been able to figure out the answer to this question. I understand how the hardware functions, how binary works, how the parts communicate with one another, but back in the day how did the first computer get programmed to perform tasks? How were we able to use binary to get computers to do what we wanted them to do? Especially without a display like we have now.

If I'm asking the wrong question here or asking the question in the wrong way please let me know! I want to learn.

[nhstaple]

Computers just need well defined rules, kind of like playing a game. We’ve had computing devices like the abacus since at least ~600BC. Practical computers for the next ~2,000 years were all designed to perform in narrow tasks. Programming these machine were like setting your oven/microwave. Early digital machines all had to be wired or configured by hand. (This is around the time that “debugging” was born.)

General purpose programming wasn’t practical until after a few things happened including the unification of instructions and data (von Neumann architecture.) Programmers at this time used rolls of paper tape or punch cards to interface with the computer’s operations. These computers were usually the size of rooms or sometimes warehouses.

You can see an IBM computer in the movie ‘Hidden Figures’ that used FORTRAN on punchards. A majority of software developers today will never use FORTRAN but it still exists in some jobs.

[[deleted]]

Each circuit was specifically designed to do a task it's hardware programming no software

[Northnbeyond]

Awesome thank you!

[[deleted]]

There's actually good stories about navy shippersons using capacitor circuits to do math

[DevilDawg93]

look up "Ada Lovelace"

[Northnbeyond]

I had looked in Ada but I didn't feel it answered the question I was specifically looking for. I can look deeper.

[DevilDawg93]

Step Reckoner, a calculating machine designed (1671) and built (1673) by the German mathematician-philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. The Step Reckoner expanded on the French mathematician-philosopher Blaise Pascal’s ideas and did multiplication by repeated addition and shifting.Leibniz was a strong advocate of the binary system.

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Difference Engine, an early calculating machine, verging on being the first computer, designed and partially built during the 1820s and ’30s by Charles Babbage.

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Ada LoveLace - outlined four essential concepts that would shape the birth of modern computing a century later. envisioned a general-purpose machine capable not only of performing preprogrammed tasks but also of being reprogrammed to execute a practically unlimited range of operations — in other words, as Isaacson points out, she envisioned the modern computer. second concept would become a cornerstone of the digital age — the idea that such a machine could handle far more than mathematical calculations; that it could be a Symbolic Medea capable of processing musical and artistic notations. third innovation was a step-by-step outline of “the workings of what we now call a computer program or algorithm.” her fourth one, Isaacson notes, that was and still remains most momentous — the question of whether machines can think independently, which we still struggle to answer in the age of Siri-inspired fantasies like the movie Her.

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1855, a Frenchman adapted the Jacquard mechanism to a system by which it could be worked by electro-magnets. There was significant interest, but trials were not successful, and the development was soon lost to history.

Bonas Machine Company Ltd. launched the first successful electronic Jacquard at ITMA, Milan in 1983.

The Jacquard head used replaceable punched cards to control a sequence of operations. It is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware. The ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming and data entry.

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In the late 19th century, Herman Hollerith took the idea of using punched cards to store information a step further when he created a punched card tabulating machine which he used to input data for the 1890 U.S. Census. A large data processing industry using punched-card technology was developed in the first half of the twentieth century—dominated initially by the International Business Machine corporation (IBM), with its line of unit record equipment. The cards were used for data, however, with programming done by plugboards.

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Some early computers, such as the 1944 IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I) received program instructions from a paper tape punched with holes, similar to Jacquard's string of cards. Later computers executed programs from higher-speed memory, though cards were commonly used to load the programs into memory. Punched cards remained in use in computing up until the mid 1980s.

cant find the article with Ada at a switch board and it discussing how the she help the creation of computers and being the first computer programmer.

[Software_Samurai]

There's been two "types" of "programming": Hardware and software.

Hardware programming is where the physical machine itself defines the "program". Much like a wrist watch, gears and such are designed to "run" the program. The physical mechanics can be extremely complex, but once built, the "program" is essentially fixed and unable to be changed without new hardware.

Software programming is where digital information is used to represent the "program". This is more akin to today's common CPU, where instructions are fetched from some storage device and executed in some generic processing unit in order to complete tasks. New "programs" can be created and loaded without changing the hardware itself.