因此，我们结束了上一集的硬件编程与东西，如插件板和巨大的开关面板，但真正需要的是一个更通用的方式来编程的计算机-软件！在本系列的大部分时间里，我们一直在讨论机器代码，或者我们的计算机为执行操作而读取的1和0，但是在1和0中给我们的计算机指令是非常低效的，需要一种“更高级”的语言。这导致了汇编代码和汇编程序的发展，使我们能够使用操作数和助记符更容易地编写程序，但汇编语言仍然与底层硬件相联系。因此，到1952年，海军军官格雷斯·霍珀（Grace Hopper）帮助创建了第一种高级编程语言A-0和编译器，将这些代码翻译到我们的机器上。这将最终导致IBM的Fortran，并在未来几十年内迎来计算语言的黄金时代。最重要的是，这些新语言利用新的抽象使编程变得更容易和更强大，使越来越多的人有能力创造新的和惊人的东西。

So we ended last episode with programming at the hardware level with things like plugboards and huge panels of switches, but what was really needed was a more versatile way to program computers - software! For much of this series we’ve been talking about machine code, or the 1’s and 0’s our computers read to perform operations, but giving our computers instructions in 1’s and 0’s is incredibly inefficient, and a “higher-level” language was needed. This led to the development of assembly code and assemblers that allow us to use operands and mnemonics to more easily write programs, but assembly language is still tied to underlying hardware. So by 1952 Navy officer Grace Hopper had helped created the first high-level programming language A-0 and compiler to translate that code to our machines. This would eventually lead to IBM’s Fortran and then a golden age of computing languages over the coming decades. Most importantly, these new languages utilized new abstractions to make programming easier and more powerful giving more and more people the ability to create new and amazing things.