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.

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 ...

Discover the top 7 programming languages of 2025 based on the TIOBE Index. Learn about the trends in Python, Java, C++, SQL, ...

At Dartmouth, long before the days of laptops and smartphones, he worked to give more students access to computers. That work helped propel generations into a new world. By Kenneth R. Rosen Thomas E.

Thomas E. Kurtz, who translated the exhilarating power of computer science in the 1960s as the coinventor of BASIC, a programming language that replaced inscrutable numbers and glyphs with intuitive ...