Programming: What is it?

Programming describes calculations and behavior in forms that computers can execute. Languages, compilers and runtimes let people work at different levels of abstraction. Programs still need requirements: a compiler accepting code does not show that the code solves the right problem.

IBM’s account of Fortran describes a shift from laborious machine-level programming toward formulas that a compiler translated into executable instructions. Programming did not begin with Fortran; its significance was making a higher-level approach practical for scientific and engineering work.