A History of Software — From Punched Cards to Coding Agents

A loom reads punched cards. Ada Lovelace writes instructions for a machine that does not exist. Two centuries later, machines write code beside us. This film follows the people and ideas that made software possible, from the first programs and compilers to Unix, personal computers, the internet and coding agents—and the work of checking what we build. Chapters 0:00 The first program had a bug 0:35 The loom that read cards 1:55 The engine that was never built 3:18 Note G 4:46 A program waiting for a machine 5:09 A machine that can be any machine 6:49 Built for the war 7:40 The six 8:43 A home for the program 9:45 The moth 10:49 Letters instead of numbers 11:50 The compiler 12:29 Formula translation 13:46 A tower of languages 14:53 Check the numbers 15:31 One missing symbol 16:08 The mythical man-month 17:08 Garmisch, 1968 18:18 Software that landed on the moon 19:42 Small programs, joined like pipes 21:28 The mother of all demos 22:50 A computer on a desk 24:49 Lo 26:10 A printer at MIT 27:22 The worm 28:44 The web 29:56 Just a hobby 30:56 The year 2000 32:03 Plan everything first 33:05 Ship it every day 34:15 In every pocket 34:48 One update 36:04 The oldest dream 37:06 Learning from text 37:49 A machine at your side 38:44 Fast, confident, sometimes wrong 39:56 Still arguing More stories Grace Hopper    • What If You Could Program with Words? | Gr...   Katherine Johnson    • Why Did an Astronaut Trust Her Numbers? | ...   Learn engineering in the AI era https://engineeros.dev/ Image credits Archival images via Wikimedia Commons. Public-domain and CC0 images include Lovelace by Chalon, Babbage, Turing by Elliott & Fry, ENIAC, the Mark I, the moth logbook, NASA hardware and astronauts, Bletchley Park by Matt Crypto, and the Dartmouth proposal (later typeset copy). Jacquard loom engraving — Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Analytical Engine plan — ArnoldReinhold, CC BY 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... EDSAC — Cambridge Computer Laboratory, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Hopper at UNIVAC — Smithsonian Institution, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Engelbart with Dennis Hamilton — Dennis Hamilton, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Xerox Alto — Adam Schuster from Orlando, FL, USA, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Altair 8800 — Sandra Fauconnier, CC BY 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... IBM PC 5150 — Marcin Wichary, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Robert E. Kahn 1973-07.jpg — ITU Pictures, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Vint Cerf portrait — Вени Марковски Veni Markovski, CC BY 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... CERN NeXT server — Robert Scoble from Half Moon Bay, USA, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Linux 0.01 notes — Linus Torvalds, CC BY 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Licenses https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Archival images shown in greyscale with crops and camera motion.