Computers need programming languages to function. That’s just a simple fact of life. However, these languages didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. They were developed by people for explicit purposes.

Linguistics and computer science intertwined in the mid-20th century. Computers help linguists better understand and analyze languages and computer scientists use linguistics to advance programming.

The Java language and virtual machine are almost two decades old, and while most developers would recognize the old and new models of Java as being related, there's no question that Java has changed ...

For decades, fierce debates have raged over the benefits of different programming languages over others: Java vs. C++; Python vs. Ruby; Flask vs. Django. While often waged with fervor by computer ...

Sixty years ago, on May 1, 1964, at 4 am in the morning, a quiet revolution in computing began at Dartmouth College. That's when mathematicians John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz successfully ran the ...

A monthly overview of things you need to know as an architect or aspiring architect. Unlock the full InfoQ experience by logging in! Stay updated with your favorite authors and topics, engage with ...

C++ programming language: How it became the invisible foundation for everything, and what’s next Your email has been sent Powerful, flexible, complex: The origins of C++ date back 40 years, yet it ...

I was 5 or 6 when I got my first sense of the joys of computer programming. This was in the early 1980s, when few people had a computer. One day, my dad brought home a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, one of the ...