Main content

Codes that Changed the WorldEpisodes

    The Tower of Babel

    5/5Aleks Krotoski explores how today's digital world is a reverse Tower of Babel.

    Java

    4/5The language that people probably interact with on a daily basis more than any other.

    Basic

    3/5As language of choice for home computing in the 1980s, Basic became iconic.

    Cobol

    2/5Deeply unpopular, but 80 per cent of the world's business software was written in it. Why?

    Fortran

    1/5Aleks Krotoski explores the language that helped put men on the moon and harness the atom.