Plankalkül

Plankalkül, developed by Konrad Zuse between 1944 and 1945, is considered the first high-level programming language. Zuse designed Plankalkül to go beyond simple arithmetic, demonstrating its capabilities with programs for checking Boolean expressions and even chess moves.12

The language supported:
* Procedures: Reusable blocks of code for routine operations.12
* Structured Data: The ability to handle complex data types, like database records.12
* Control Flow: Conditional statements and loops to modify program execution.12

Zuse intended Plankalkül for machine translation, but due to wartime disruptions, his work was not widely known outside Germany for many years, making it roughly a decade ahead of its time.12