The first computer and high-level programming language were invented in Germany. What took place between this time and the present which made Germany much less of an innovative place computer/software-wise?
I'd question if that's true. Research wise both applied and theoretical Germany's still a really good place to be as far as Computer Science is concerned. We're just not and never have been a consumer driven economy and that's what people focus on these days.
An example of this to me is Dickmann's autonomous cars which were driving around on highways in the 80s (https://youtu.be/_HbVWm7wdmE), yet you'd hardly think they even existed given how the rate of progress is framed in that industry by consumer products.
High-tech R&D tends to be driven by domestic military interests, which were obviously on a short leash after 1945.
Even if Germany's brightest were not brain-drained to USA/USSR, they would not have much funding nor opportunity to pursue their advanced research in occupied Germany.
Also maybe losing all scientists to America and half of the country to Russia for 30 years might have contributed here.
A cultural aspect may be that Americans are more willing to try and fail, which in software has almost zero cost. In engineering it's an advantage to be risk-averse. In software where "building" is automated, and barely a factor. Theory almost equals practice here. So it's cheaper to practice.
> Unable to continue building computers – which was also forbidden by the Allied Powers...
...this bit of information was actually news to me, but the brain drain that started in 1933 and then intensified after WW2 is probably an important part of the answer. Maybe it also contributed to a general mindset that the grass is greener across the ocean ;)
To give them some credit, they did create SAP, which is currently the largest non-American software company. It's just that Enterprise Resource Planning software is 'not sexy' so your average person probably has not heard of them, or they have and don't know what they do.
Off the top of my head I can think of both Siemens and Telefunken who made computers going back to the 1950s. In the early 1970s, I took a grad course on the design of the ALGOL 68 compiler for the Telefunken TR440 system, taught by one of the compiler's designers at the Technical University of Munich.
I'd say that modern Germany has definitely produced significant contributions.
Cities laid to waste and the partition of the entire country into two, as well as prosecution and murder of much of its population, and a good chunk of the rest sent to die in the Army, in no particular order.
There is/was still some important innovation coming out of Germany from time to time. For example, the first LCD display and the first chip card were invented in Germany, and the MP3 format was developed in Germany. Not a whole lot overall though.
Optics for lithographic processes and other critical components for ASML's machines are developed and produced by Zeiss in Germany AFAIK (these things project beams into structures measured in terms of a couple Angstroms). Also world-market leader for high-grade SiO and other chemicals for wafers is German last I checked.
you can't be serious, germany is a very innovative country. Like who would label as innovate except the US? For example, it creates a LOT of patents, second behind only the US. It is a leading country for industrial research of various kinds, from the mechanical industry to material science. It is the foreign country with the biggest presence of industrial research for american companies, if you want to make the comparison (a fact I remember, so take it with a grain of salt). As a recent high-tech example one of the two mRNA vaccines for covid was created in germany from BioNTech, and one of the other leading mRNA company besides Moderna is also in germany. Granted, it's not performing well in the number of startups created and the software industry is not as strong, but other indicators are doing very well. Also, basic research in comparison to industrial is very competitive, a lot of papers get produced and cited every year. Germany invests a lot of the GDP back into R&D and is one of the leading countries by this metric.
Germanys economy is just not as consumer driven anymore, as many former industry giants crumbled from the competition form asia, so you don't really interact much with it. But if you look at the metrics instead of personal impressions they have their strengths. You don't really export so much by producing bad, non-innovative products.
An example of this to me is Dickmann's autonomous cars which were driving around on highways in the 80s (https://youtu.be/_HbVWm7wdmE), yet you'd hardly think they even existed given how the rate of progress is framed in that industry by consumer products.