How did the stored-program concept make high-level programming languages possible?

The stored-program concept, championed by John von Neumann, revolutionized computing by proposing that instructions be stored in the same electronic memory as data. This design principle, central to the von Neumann machine, allowed instructions to be encoded and modified by other instructions.12

This capability was critical for the development of high-level programming languages because it enabled a computer to treat a program as data. By doing so, a computer could function as its own "coding machine," running a translator program that converts high-level, human-readable code into the machine-language instructions required for execution.23

Before this, programs were often manually translated or hard-wired, making them difficult to manage. By allowing software to manipulate other software, the stored-program model provided the necessary foundation for the automated translation processes that define modern computer programming languages and software development.123