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Senior Data Engineer at cfc.com
Retro gamer (BBC Micro, MS-DOS, Win 9x). Dead language coding enthusiast. All things Acorn and Psion! 🦉
YouTubehttps://youtube.com/ColinHoad
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A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
James Iry; Thursday, May 7, 2009

1801 - Joseph Marie Jacquard uses punch cards to instruct a loom to weave "hello, world" into a tapestry. Redditers of the time are not impressed due to the lack of tail call recursion, concurrency, or proper capitalization.

1842 - Ada Lovelace writes the first program. She is hampered in her efforts by the minor inconvenience that she doesn't have any actual computers to run her code. Enterprise architects will later relearn her techniques in order to program in UML.

1936 - Alan Turing invents every programming language that will ever be but is shanghaied by British Intelligence to be 007 before he can patent them.

1936 - Alonzo Church also invents every language that will ever be but does it better. His lambda calculus is ignored because it is insufficiently C-like. This criticism occurs in spite of the fact that C has not yet been invented.

1940s - Various "computers" are "programmed" using direct wiring and switches. Engineers do this in order to avoid the tabs vs spaces debate.

1957 - John Backus and IBM create FORTRAN. There's nothing funny about IBM or FORTRAN. It is a syntax error to write FORTRAN while not wearing a blue tie.
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Many thanks to @ghalfacree for the very flattering write-up in El Reg regarding my fledgling OPL language server project! https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/27/vintage_computing_boffin_resurrects_opl/
Classic Psion fan releases proof-of-concept language server for OPL

: Vintage computing boffinry to please palmtop enthusiasts

The Register

Once more, with feeling...

Paste as plain text should be the default.

Hollywood Holocaust walk-through with all secrets revealed! My latest Duke Nukem 3D video is here, available on my CH-DOS channel:
https://youtu.be/E74Xyt8_30U
Duke Nukem 3D Walkthrough - Hollywood Holocaust (ALL SECRETS)

YouTube
The game that birthed an entire genre! In at #7 it's CITADEL, developed by Michael Jakobsen and released by Superior Software in 1985 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. Watch my review here:
https://youtu.be/5wGSsgqRDEY
Citadel - Top 85 Games for the BBC Micro (7)

YouTube
I'm planning to go along to this (as a buyer!) Anyone I know going to be there too? http://computinghistory.org.uk/det/69238/Retro-Computer-Sale-Sunday-26th-February-2023/
Retro Computer Sale - Sunday 26th February 2023 - Event Ticket - Computing History

Bring n Byte what better place to buy, sell, and exchange your retro tech! Computers Peripherals Consoles Video Games Software Accessories If youd like to book a table to sell stuff, please drop To...

Welcome to my new site! | Colin Hoad

I've decided to launch a website to make it easier to find my videos - and to give me a way of sharing general updates and information outside of YouTube, too. Way back in the early days of the web, I

Colin Hoad
In a follow-up to my last video, I look at combining the audio mod with a custom SCART lead (c/o
coolnovelties.co.uk) to get both sound and picture from my BBC Micro through my TV! https://youtu.be/I8yKlPjdLwo
How to get both sound and picture on a TV from a BBC Micro

YouTube
My Twitter integration appears to be broken, so here's my latest video: fitting an audio mod to my Beeb!
https://youtu.be/putHqM91ZZ0
How to get audio out of a BBC Micro

YouTube
Unboxing Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition - in 2023! https://youtu.be/84dw_RHDKrI @[email protected] @[email protected]
Unboxing Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition - in 2023!

YouTube