“This is the Procedure”: Ancient First program

Have you ever felt like the problems you’re solving are completely new? Like nobody before you has wrestled with the same logical puzzles, the same iterative thinking, the same “if this, then that” decision trees?

I used to think programming was modern. Revolutionary. Ours.

Then I learned about Donald Knuth’s discovery in 1972, and everything shifted.

The Moment Everything Changed

Knuth, legendary computer scientist and author of The Art of Computer Programming, was examining ancient clay tablets at Yale. These weren’t artifacts from some early computer age. They were from 1800 BCE. Eighteen hundred years before Christ.

And they contained algorithms.

Not just calculations. Not just answers. But procedures, step-by-step instructions with conditional logic. If-then statements. Loops. The same fundamental structures we use today when we code.

The Babylonians had figured it out. Nearly 4,000 years ago, they were writing what we’d now call executable code.

From “Why does this matter?” to “What if this changes everything?”

Here’s what stopped me cold: one tablet described a procedure for calculating square roots. But the scribe didn’t just write the formula, they wrote the process.

Let me translate what they carved into clay:

Ancient Babylonian procedure: Start with a guess for the square root. Divide your number by that guess. Average the result with your original guess. If the new answer differs from your guess, repeat. Otherwise, you’ve found your answer.

Sound familiar? Here’s the exact same logic in Python:

def babylonian_sqrt(n, tolerance=0.0001):
    x = n / 2  # Make your first guess
    
    while True:
        next_x = (x + n / x) / 2
        
        if abs(next_x - x) < tolerance:
            return next_x  # We're done
            
        x = next_x  # Keep refining

result = babylonian_sqrt(25)
print(f"Square root: {result}")  # 5.0

The structure is identical: initialize, iterate, check a condition, branch, repeat or terminate.

This is programming. This has always been programming.

What This Actually Means

Think about the timeline: This is the same era as Hammurabi’s Code, those famous legal tablets that said “if a man steals, then he shall be punished.”

But here’s the difference that hit me: Hammurabi’s code was about controlling behavior. The mathematical procedures were about enabling it. They weren’t rules for humans to interpret, they were instructions to be followed mechanically, perfectly, repeatedly.

They didn’t require judgment. They required execution.

And that’s when I realized: the fundamental concepts of computation, procedures, iteration, conditional branching, aren’t innovations of the digital age.

They’re ancient human tools. As old as writing itself.

Your Takeaway This Week

The next time you write an if statement or a while loop, pause for a second.

You’re not inventing something new. You’re inheriting something ancient.

Some Babylonian scribe pressed a stylus into wet clay and created the world’s first executable code, not because they had computers, but because they understood something timeless: complex problems break down into simple, repeatable steps.

That same power is yours right now, whether you’re debugging code, planning a project, or solving any problem that feels overwhelming.

Break it down. Check your conditions. Iterate. Refine.

Algorithms didn’t begin with Silicon Valley. They began in Babylon.

What problem are you treating as “too modern” or “too complex” that might just need ancient wisdom, one clear procedure at a time?