50 Awesome Coding Facts

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We all know that coding is the way of the future. With so much of the world built on technology, understanding computer programming is one of the most in demand skills for the future.

In fact, we believe every child should learn to code so that they learn the important skills of logical thinking and problem solving.

It’s true that when one hears the word “programming,” many people feel apprehensive. The idea of coding is complicated, but as we browse through its technical realm, we will later realize how fascinating and mind-blowing it is.

Here is a list of different coding facts and programming trivia that you might not have encountered before:

Interesting Facts about Coding

1. Programming started and developed in 1883  when Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage collaborated on the Analytical Engine, a primitive mechanical computer. 
2. In the 1950s, International Business Machines (IBM)’s John Backus and his colleagues devised the first coding language, Fortran (FORmula TRANslation).
3. After the introduction of programming, technology took quick steps towards advancement, with the creation of computer games and the predecessor of the internet, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET).
4. According to the PYPL Popularity of Programming Language Index, which evaluates how frequently language lessons are searched on Google, Python is the most widely used programming language.
5. The name Oak was intended to be used for the popular Java that we commonly use now, but it was already used and copyrighted.
6. James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton started working on the Java language project in June 1991, which was originally planned for interactive television.
7. Alan Turing, an English computer scientist, employed his cryptologic and mathematical talents to took a critical role by decrypting the Nazi code machine ENIGMA during World War II.
8. NASA’s reusable space shuttle in the 1970s had less code than our phones today.
9. Contrary to how it sounds like, Python was named after Monty Python, not after the snake.
10. In 2018, the video game business generated about $135 billion in revenue. 

Facts about Computer Programming

Computer programming has been an in-demand field throughout the modern era. It greatly changed the world—the businesses, employment, and many more—as it provided a critical role in conducting the services that we enjoy today. To know more about programming, here are some facts to enhance your knowledge:

1. The first computer “bug” was discovered in 1947 in the form of a dead moth lodged in a Harvard Mark II computer, and it still persists today in the form of 0s and 1s.
2. It was in 1971 that the first-ever computer virus emerged, called “Creeper.” The creators intended to experiment and analyze how it could spread across the files and computer itself.
3. The majority of web pages are created by utilizing many programming languages.
4. “Black-hat” hackers build malware to conduct crimes, whereas “white-hat” hackers write programs to guard against malware.
5. In any programming language, infinity cannot be represented as an integer.
6. Approximately 70% of coding occupations have nothing to do with technology.
7. The first known programming languages were FORTRAN, LISP, and COBOL, which are still used presently. 
8. There are around 700 different programming languages, with more on the way.
9. During the Covid-19 outbreak, Avi Schiffmann, a teenager, created one of the most prominent COVID-19 tracking websites on the internet, named “ncov2019.live.”
10. The game, dubbed Spacewar, was created from the ground up by Steve Russel, a young computer programmer, and his dedicated group of developers for no monetary gain at all.

Fun Facts about Coding

Who says coding is boring? The truth is, it is not. It is not nerdy nor is it exclusive for intellectual people only. The more you fall in love with its science, the more you will be able to see how fun it is as a hobby, a job, and even a source of basic knowledge. Here are additional fun facts about coding:

1. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, developed his first computer software, a tic-tac-toe program that allowed people to play games against the machine.
2. C programming language has a predecessor known as “B,” which was conceived and written by Ken Thompson in 1969.
3. C is the only programming language that has been around for the longest.
4. Apple Inc. became the first US trillion-dollar corporation in 2018.
5. All binary code-running software is written entirely in 0s and 1s, and there are unlimited permutations of these two numbers.
6. During World War II, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was powered on and used to compute ballistic trajectories.
7. ENIAC was operated by six women, namely Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman. 
8. The International Space Station, in particular, uses the ADA programming language, which was developed in 1980 and recognized as an international standard programming language in 1995.
9. Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist and systems engineer from the United States, authored the computer code that saved the Apollo Moon landing mission.
10. Knowing how to code is a major requirement for astronomers.

Facts about Coding for Beginners

Anyone can easily learn to code. Even kids can learn to code and we will show you how in our guides here. Just like any other discipline, it involves consistency and awareness on how it began. Indeed, the future is coding. For beginners, these are some of the must-know information.

1. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple, originally achieved fame as youths by creating the video game named Breakout.
2. Learning to code can help you enhance your analytical reasoning, problem-solving skills, critical understanding, and leadership abilities.
3. People develop code, and computers, in turn, operate numerous daily items such as phones, electricity, microwaves, and automobiles.
4. A program is a text file produced in a specific programming language.
5. The JavaScript programming language is unique in that it is not tied to any specific company or organization.
6. Text editors and IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) are frequently used by programmers to aid their work.
7. Many machines could perform basic calculations, but Charles Babbage’s Analytical Machine was the first “programmable” computer.
8. A huge percentage of computer programmers begin writing code before they graduate from high school.
9. Perl, Delphi, and VBA are the most disliked languages due to their complexities.
10. In the Java programming language, the term “final” contains numerous meanings.

Amazing Coding Facts

By reading this far, you would have thought that computer programming is amazing. It really is, but wait until you read more thought-evoking information that would potentially change how one perceive the art of coding.

1. A Java programmer’s average annual income is around $84,000.
2. Grey hat programmers are a hybrid of the two, assisting individuals while simultaneously abusing their web-based weaknesses if not compensated for their services.
3. Approximately 75% of elementary school students prefer to learn a programming language over French or some other foreign language.
4. The average coder writes 10 to 12 lines of code every day.
5. Each year, computer viruses negatively impact the global economy by over $1.5 trillion.
6. Unlike the preponderance of current programming languages, the Python programming language for Data Science outputs several values from a single function.
7. Niklaus Wirth designed the Pascal programming language, which was named after French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician Blaise Pascal.
8. Around 1992, James Gosling worked at Sun Labs. Gosling and his colleagues were working on a set-top box and began by “cleaning up” C++, eventually creating a new language and runtime where Java arose. 
9. Despite the fact that their names include the same word, JavaScript has nothing to do with Java.
10. In 2009, Markus Persson, a Swedish software programmer, created and released the computer game Minecraft, which was later purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

There are actually more things and processes in performing the basic functions of technology that we do not see. It takes a multitude of years, efforts, and collaborations to achieve the convenience we enjoy from these complex programs and designs. As different minds expand their imagination, the modern world will continue to prosper and progress.

Who knows? In the next decades to come, we will be able to witness the so called impossible come to life. All thanks to the ever-changing, unpredictable power of computer programming.