What programming languages were available or used before FORTRAN?
I ask because I found this node at Everything2 and I’m sure there were some programming languages in use before FORTRAN.
Machine or assembly code.
Here’s some more info.
My first programming language was ALGOL which may have preceeded FORTRAN.
According to the timeline in the link I provided, OldBroad, FORTRAN preceded ALGOL by a year (one of the development team for FORTRAN went on to work on ALGOL.)
Off topic,
but FORTRAN was (is?) an excellent language in that it does precisely what it sets out to do (namely FOmula TRANslation) in a very simple manner.
Sorry! Missed an “R”
where does the evil and hateful COBOL come into this?
COBOL!!!
AAAAcccckkkk!
Donn’t speak it’s name aloud you fool!
Around the time I started school, actually. What’s up with COBOL, folks? Curious layperson wantin’ to know. 
The main problem that a lot of people have with Cobol is that it’s very verbose. There’s an old joke that object-oriented Cobol should be called “ADD 1 TO COBOL”.
Ah, Fortran.
Spiritus loses himself in memories of punch cards and running-time signup sheets.
Before fortran theere were assemblers and bootstrap programs and honest-to-god wiring sequences. But you have to be really ancient to remember them.
And fire. Fire came before Fortran, too. It gave us something else to do with the punch cards.