Back When Men Were Men...
...and computers were computers, John Backus and associates developed FORTRAN, formally released in 1957. He was also the "B" in "BNF," for Backus-Naur Form, a very elegant notation for describing formal grammars (e.g. computer languages). (Not that I was ever very knowledgeable or proficient with things at that level of abstraction, but I think it's cool.)
My own involvement with computers doesn't go back nearly that far--only to the mid-'70s. Computers couldn't do nearly as much, and making them do it was harder, but to me it was more fun. Part of the appeal, I have to admit, was that of being in on a very arcane secret. But I could have contentedly spent my career writing assembly language.
