Address programming language

The Address programming language (Russian: Адресный язык программирования) is one of the world's first high-level programming languages.^[1] It was created in 1955 by Ekaterina Yushchenko. In particular, the Address programming language made possible indirect addressing and addresses of the highest rank – analogous to pointers.

Unlike Fortran and ALGOL 60, APL (Address programming language) supported indirect addressing and addressing of higher ranks. Indirect addressing is a mechanism that appeared in other programming languages much later (1963–65 – in PL/1).

The Address language was implemented on all the computers of the first and second generation produced in the Soviet Union. The Address language influenced the architecture of the Kyiv, Strela, Ural, and Promin computers. The Address was used exclusively for the solution of economical problems, including aviation, space exploration, machine building, and military complex – in particular, to calculate the trajectories of ballistic missiles in flight – in the 1950–60s. Implementations of the Address programming language were used for nearly 20 years. A book about APL was written in 1967 and it was translated into French and published in France in 1974.

The Address language affected not only the Soviet Union's economical development, but information technology and programming. APL's proposed and implemented ideas and tools can be found in many programming-related fields, such as abstract data types, object-oriented programming, functional programming, database and artificial intelligence.

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