Code as a Language of Logic — Nikita Kuznetsov on Why Programming Has Become a Language of Thought

To many people, programming looks like a jumble of incomprehensible symbols and commands. But Nikita Kuznetsov believes that modern code has long since ceased to be merely a technical instruction for a computer. “Code isn’t chaotic text or magic for the select few. It’s a way to think logically and explain a task to a machine so that it can execute it without ambiguity,” says Nikita Kuznetsov. The history of programming shows just how difficult the path to modern development languages has been. The first programmers worked almost directly with machine code—sequences of zeros and ones that the computer understood without translation. This approach was extremely complex and required almost surgical precision. Machine code was considered virtually unreadable to humans, and any error could halt the program’s operation. Later, high-level languages emerged, which changed everything. They allowed programs to be written not in the language of the processor, but using logic more understandable to humans—through variables, functions, and data structures. One of the first widely adopted languages was FORTRAN, which ushered in a new era of development. “When high-level languages appeared, programmers stopped struggling with the machine and were able to focus on solving problems,” explains Kuznetsov. But development didn’t stop there. BASIC made programming more accessible for learning, C gave developers more control and performance, and later Python, JavaScript, and modern...