Key facts

  • Ada Lovelace wrote notes on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine in 1843;
  • Grace Hopper developed the A-0 system in 1952; it is an important milestone in the development of compilers and machine-independent programming.
  • IBM introduced FORTRAN in 1957; it became a major high-level language for scientific and engineering computation.
  • CODASYL guided the creation of COBOL in 1959; COBOL became significant for business data processing and record-oriented applications.
  • Dennis Ritchie developed C at Bell Labs during 1971-73; C remains central to system programming and explains many ideas behind operators, data types a...

Key Points at a Glance

  1. 1

    Ada Lovelace wrote notes on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine in 1843; her algorithm for Bernoulli numbers is treated as an early landmark in programming history.

  2. 2

    Grace Hopper developed the A-0 system in 1952; it is an important milestone in the development of compilers and machine-independent programming.

  3. 3

    IBM introduced FORTRAN in 1957; it became a major high-level language for scientific and engineering computation.

  4. 4

    CODASYL guided the creation of COBOL in 1959; COBOL became significant for business data processing and record-oriented applications.

  5. 5

    Dennis Ritchie developed C at Bell Labs during 1971-73; C remains central to system programming and explains many ideas behind operators, data types and memory.

  6. 6

    Guido van Rossum released Python in 1991; Python is widely used for teaching, scripting, automation and readable pseudocode-like programmes.

  7. 7

    Sun Microsystems released Java in 1995; its bytecode and Java Virtual Machine made platform-independent execution a standard exam concept.

BASIC COMPUTER INSTRUCTOR study hubView study packs

Algorithms and problem solving

An algorithm is a finite, ordered set of steps used to solve a problem. It must have clear input, definite steps, at least one output, and it must terminate after a finite number of operations. In objective computer-awareness questions, an algorithm is not the same as a programme. The algorithm is the logic; the programme is the expression of that logic in a programming language. A recipe, a fee-calculation procedure or a method for sorting names alphabetically can all be explained as algorithms before any code is written.

Good algorithms are judged by correctness, clarity, efficiency and generality. Correctness means the steps produce the expected result for all valid inputs. Efficiency is commonly discussed through time and space: how many operations are needed and how much memory is used. Recruitment-level MCQs usually test simple cases such as finding the largest of three numbers, adding marks, calculating percentage, checking odd or even, searching a list, or repeating a task until a condition is satisfied. In a Rajasthan school lab example, an attendance programme may take roll numbers as input, mark presence, count absentees and print a summary.

Core recall: an algorithm is language-independent logic, while a programme is language-specific implementation.

Open the complete note

This public page shows the first available section. The study pack opens the complete topic with all revision material.

7 more sections in the complete note

Open study pack