Speedcoding, Speedcode or SpeedCo was the first high-level programming language[a] created for an IBM computer.[1] The language was developed by John W. Backus in 1953 for the IBM 701 to support computation with floating point numbers.[2] The idea arose from the difficulty of programming the IBM SSEC machine when Backus was hired to calculate astronomical positions in early 1950.[3] The speedcodin