Before the era of websites and mobile applications, giant machines required painstakingly written instructions. The first programming language in the world was born from the mind of an unknown German engineer: Konrad Zuse. When World War II raged across Europe, Zuse designed Plankalkül (meaning "planning calculus") - a language that was never implemented in its time, but became a pioneer for everything we use today.
Plankalkül was introduced in Zuse's doctoral dissertation in 1945, but was not fully published until 1972. This language was designed for Zuse's mechanical computers Z3 (1938) and Z4 (1945), but Zuse had already seen the potential of a high-level language that could handle various types of data - from numbers to records. Plankalkül contains features such as arrays, loops, and subroutines, which are now considered fundamental in programming.
The Birth of Plankalkül
Zuse began developing the idea of a programming language in 1943, when he realized that writing machine code directly was complex and error-prone. Plankalkül used matrix notation and special symbols, with each instruction determined by the position of the symbol in the grid. This was a very advanced concept for its time, but the reality of war hindered further development. After the war, Plankalkül was almost forgotten when FORTRAN (1957) and ALGOL (1958) emerged as major programming languages.
Although Plankalkül was never widely used, its contributions cannot be denied. It was the first language to use control structures such as conditional statements and repetition, as well as the concept of "data types." Zuse also included the idea of "multiple operators" that allowed operations to be performed on entire arrays. Plankalkül was nearly a decade earlier than FORTRAN, but due to the lack of compatible computers, it remained only on paper.
Legacy of the First Programming Language
Plankalkül is more than just a historical footnote. In 1975, German computer scientist Wolfgang Händler implemented part of Plankalkül on a modern computer to prove its usability. This study showed that the language could run complex programs, including tree algorithms. In 2000, a group at the University of Berlin developed a partial compiler for Plankalkül, allowing it to function on contemporary systems.
However, the question of who deserves the title of the first programming language remains debated. Some argue that FORTRAN by IBM (1957) was the first truly implemented and commercially used high-level language. Meanwhile, Short Code (1949) and A-0 (1951) were also mentioned. However, according to a strict definition - a language designed for algorithmic programming and not just machine code - Plankalkül surpasses all others.
Zuse himself never received proper recognition during his lifetime. He died in 1995, but his work is now respected in the computer history community. The Deutsches Museum in Munich displays original documentation of Plankalkül, while a statue of Zuse stands in Berlin as a tribute to the pioneer who paved the way for the billion-dollar software industry.
The story of Plankalkül reminds us that innovation often arises at unexpected times. Without Plankalkül, the development of languages like C, Python, or Java might have taken longer. The first programming language is proof that ideas can change the world, even if they were never touched by a single line of code in their time.
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*Reference: [Programming language — Wikipedia](https://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahasa_pengaturcaraan)*