79 points

This might qualify as humor if you don’t know much at all about programming.

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1 point

I used to wonder how the first computers were coded without computers in primary school

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7 points

For anyone else who wonders: by manually wiring in the circuits and flipping switches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plugboard#Early_computers

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62 points

first they had machine code
then they wrote the assembler in machine code
then they rewrote the assembler in assembly
and assembled it with the machine code assembler
then they wrote the C compiler in assembly
and assembled it with the assembly assembler
then they rewrote the C compiler in C
and compiled it with the assembly C compiler
then they had the C compiler
and everything else was written in C

(note: this is a massive oversimplification and ignores much of the history of programming languages, but it at least gets across the idea of how bootstrapping is done)

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10 points

And then we fucked it all up by writing the JavaScript interpreter.

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1 point

Blame the Brave CEO

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8 points

Indeed. And the machine code is created as part of the physical CPU design.

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3 points

Also the first version of a new compiler (the one written in another language) is often skeletal, implementing only the features necessary to compile the full version (written in its own language), which is then immediately used to recompile itself.

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27 points

It’s programming languages all the way down.

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20 points

Assembly. Each command literally translates to a binary number that the processor will interpret to perform certain functions.

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6 points

Or bytecode that the runtime will interpret

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1 point

Or black magic that the gods will interpret

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18 points

You might want to put down that bong.

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Programmer Humor

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