The “Hello, World!” program became iconic because it’s often the first thing students learn to code. It appeared in Brian Kernighan’s 1972 tutorial on the B programming language and was popularized in the 1978 book The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.
Captcha systems do more than block bots. The reCAPTCHA project, acquired by Google, was used to digitize books and newspapers by asking users to interpret hard-to-read words. Each user-submitted result helped train OCR algorithms, combining security with crowdsourced data improvement.
Git, the version control system used by millions of developers, was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005. He built it after a dispute with a commercial source control tool used in Linux development. Git tracks changes to code, supports branching and merging, and underpins most collaborative software projects on GitHub.
The first video game ever made was likely “Tennis for Two” in 1958, created by physicist William Higinbotham. It ran on an oscilloscope and simulated a side-view tennis match. It was a public demo at a science exhibit and predates Pong by over a decade.
Sorting algorithms are among the most studied topics in CS, and comparison-based sorts like merge sort and quicksort have a theoretical lower bound of O(n log n). However, specialized non-comparison sorts like radix sort can outperform them under specific conditions.
The idea of cloud computing is older than you think—the concept dates back to the 1960s, when J.C.R. Licklider imagined an “intergalactic computer network.” However, it wasn’t until the 2000s that Amazon Web Services (AWS) popularized the modern form, allowing developers to rent computing power on demand.
Machine learning algorithms don’t “understand” the world; they find patterns in data and make predictions based on statistical relationships. For example, image recognition models detect features like edges or textures, then combine them to identify objects. They need massive amounts of labeled data to perform accurately.
QR codes were invented in 1994 by a Japanese company named Denso Wave. Unlike traditional barcodes, QR codes store information both horizontally and vertically, allowing them to hold over 7,000 characters. They also include error correction features, which means they can still work even if partially damaged or obscured.
The term “algorithm” comes from the name of Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, who lived in the 9th century. His works on arithmetic and algebra were translated into Latin in the Middle Ages and helped lay the foundations for modern computational thinking.
The first webpage ever created is still online at CERN. It was launched by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991 and simply explained what the World Wide Web was and how to use it. The site marked the birth of the modern internet as we know it.
JavaScript was created in just 10 days in 1995 by Brendan Eich at Netscape. Despite its rushed origin, it became one of the most widely used programming languages in the world. It was originally called Mocha, then LiveScript, before being renamed to JavaScript (as a marketing ploy unrelated to Java).
Alan Turing’s “Universal Machine” (1936) laid the theoretical foundation for all modern computers. It was a conceptual device that could simulate any algorithmic process, and is essentially what today’s programmable computers are. Turing’s work is considered the birth of theoretical computer science.
Grace Hopper invented the first compiler in 1952, a program that translates human-readable code into machine code. Before this, programming was done using binary or assembly language, which was extremely tedious and error-prone. Her work directly influenced the development of COBOL, one of the earliest high-level programming languages.
The Fibonacci sequence appears in nature frequently—in the arrangement of leaves, pinecones, and flower petals. The ratio between successive Fibonacci numbers approximates the golden ratio.
Fiber optic cables transmit data using light, not electricity. Inside, light bounces off the inner walls through total internal reflection, allowing incredibly fast and long-distance communication with minimal loss.
The James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors are coated in gold because gold reflects infrared light extremely well. Each mirror segment is covered with just 100 nanometers of gold—thinner than a human hair.
Did you know the reason LED lights are so energy-efficient is that they convert over 90% of their energy into light, whereas traditional incandescent bulbs waste most energy as heat?
Did you know the human eye can distinguish around 10 million different colors, but our brains interpret color relatively rather than absolutely? This is why optical illusions can trick our perception of color.