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Codes that Changed the World

Aleks Krotoski tells the story of the languages that have been used to talk to machines.

Radio 4,5 episodes

Episodes

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Fortran
Aleks Krotoski explores the language that helped put men on the moon and harness the atom.
06 Apr 2015,15 mins
Cobol
Deeply unpopular, but 80 per cent of the world's business software was written in it. Why?
07 Apr 2015,15 mins
Basic
As language of choice for home computing in the 1980s, Basic became iconic.
08 Apr 2015,15 mins
Java
The language that people probably interact with on a daily basis more than any other.
09 Apr 2015,15 mins
The Tower of Babel
Aleks Krotoski explores how today's digital world is a reverse Tower of Babel.
10 Apr 2015,15 mins