Plankalkül

Plankalkül (plan calculus) is a computer language developed for engineering purposes by Konrad Zuse between 1942 and 1946. It has a very good claim to be the first high level language to be designed for a computer. It included assignment statements, sub routines, conditional statements, iteration, floating point arithmetic, arrays, hierarchical record structures, assertions, exception handling and other advanced features such as goal-directed execution. It was first published in 1972 and the first compiler for it was implemented in 2000 by the University of Berlin.

References:

• Zuse, Konrad: Der Plankalkül. Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung. Nr. 63, BMBW - GMD - 63, 1972
• Giloi, Wolfgang, K.: Konrad Zuse's Plankalkül: The First High-Level "non von Neumann" Programming Language. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1997, http://www.computer.org/annals/an1997/a2017abs.htm
• Rojas, Raúl et al.: Plankalkül: The First High-Level Programming Language and its Implementation, http://www.zib.de/zuse/Inhalt/Programme/Plankalkuel/Plankalkuel-Report/Plankalkuel-Report.htm

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See also: high-level programming language, programming language