The History of Programming by Mark Rendle

May 20, 2022
This was the keynote for DevCon 2016 delivered by Mark Rendle.

This video is part of Electronic Design's 70th Anniversary series.

This is a bit like Mel Brooks History of the World, Part I for programmers. 

I've been writing a number of articles and recording numerous videos related to Electronic Design's history and the technology and people we have followed over the years. There's way too much that occurred for me to cover it all, so I'm shamelessly highlighting those who have helped do that job of informing and entertaining. I still need to meet Mark Rendle some day, but in the mean time, you can enjoy his video presentations on history and humor on YouTube. 

"Mark is founder of Rendle Labs, creators of CloudLens and providers of consultancy and training in next-generation .NET and cloud computing. Mark has been doing this stuff for more than quarter of a century, and he still hasn't got bored. The rumors that Mark starts rumors about himself, to make himself look better than he is, are definitely not true.

"Join Mark on a quick-fire, whistle-stop, shallow-to-the-point-of-vacuous tour through the history of programming and programming languages, from the surprise twist at the beginning, through the Golden Age of LISP, C, and Smalltalk, right up to the present day. What was the Greatest Programming Language ever? Which is better: dynamic or static typing? Why is Java? What does the future of programming hold for the brave adventurer? Discover the answers to none of these questions or indeed any others in this utterly pointless but hopefully entertaining talk. Warning: not suitable for children or IT managers."

Having used most of the languages he mentions at some point in my career, it was an interesting look back at the evolution from someone else's perspective. 

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About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below. 

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.  

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence. 

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