Eight things to know about Programmers' Day, courtesy of Microsoft

Source: Microsoft.

In celebration of Programmers’ Day*, celebrated on 13 September, Microsoft has listed 10 things that are not well-known about programming or coding in a blog post by David Lim, Director, Developer Evangelism and Experience, Microsoft Asia Pacific. Here are 2³ (eight) of them.

1. There are more than 20 Asian programming languages

Some of them include BAIK (Indonesian), Changjo (Korean), Dolittle (Japanese), PerlYuYan (Chinese) and the Hindi Programming Language.

2. The first computer programmer was female

Ada Lovelace¹, daughter of the poet Lord Byron, is widely recognised as the very first computer programmer. The Ada programming language was named in her honour.

3. Coding skills are in demand

Market research firm Evans Data² estimates that the global software developer population has just about doubled since 2010 to around 19 million people, and is expected to grow to 25 million by 2020.

4. Picking up programming skills can be done online

With online resources like Microsoft Virtual Academy, learning to code can be relatively cost-effective. Learning to code online can take an average³ of three months instead of four years in university, costing US$10,000 to US$20,000 instead of US$50,000 to US$200,000.

5. Computers helped to end WWII

Alan Turing⁴, an English computer scientist, expedited the end of WWII by hacking into ENIGMA, the Nazis’ code machine. 

6. Blame those pesky Captchas on Turing

Turing also invented the Turing Test, which is defined as a test that can tell computers and humans apart. CAPTCHA⁵ stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

7. The first computer bug was literally a moth

In the 1940s operators were working on a computer at Harvard University⁶ found a moth within the machine and logged it as "first actual case of bug being found”.

8. Asia Pacific students want to learn coding

Three out of four students in the region want coding to be a core subject in school and are willing to take classes outside of school if given the opportunity, according to research⁷ by Microsoft Asia Pacific.

Interested?

Read the Microsoft blog post

Find games and tutorials on Code.org, Microsoft’s partner for #HourOfCode, an initiative to challenge 100 million people to learn to code.

Hashtag: #HourOfCode

1Bio.com: Ada Lovelace Biography

2Evans Data Corp: Global Developer Population and Demographic Study 2015 v.1

3IronHack: 10 reasons to make 2015 the year you learn code

4The Enigma of Alan Turing

5The CAPTCHA: A History, A Problem, Possible Solutions

6 The very first recorded computer bug

7 The WeSpeakCode survey covered Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Thailand, Philippines, Korea and Vietnam with a total sample size of 1,850 respondents.

*Programmers’ Day is typically celebrated on 13 September, the 256th day of the year. The number 256 was chosen as the number of distinct values that can be represented with an eight-bit byte.