Don’t dismiss the spreadsheet. It not only brought programming to the masses, but was an early entry into rapid application development, functional programming and an easy and natural approach to parallel programming, reactive programming and cellular automata.

Written by Michael Metcalf, John Reid and Malcolm Cohen, all leading experts in the field, two of whom have actively contributed to Fortran 2018, this is a complete and authoritative description of Fortran in its latest form.

In the early 2000’s, parents began noticing that educators were no longer interested in teaching their children about computers in ways that would lead them to get excited about pursuing computer-related careers like computer science and computer engineering. The problem was explained in a famous 2006 essay by the well-known astrophysicist and science fiction writer David Brin, Why Johnny can’t code. As the essay mentions, Brin could not find a modern computer and modern software capable of teaching children the BASIC computer programming language at a level they can understand. So, he solved the problem by buying a used computer from the 1980’s that came with BASIC already installed.

BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched — but today there’s no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming.