INTRODUCTION:
Just like any other concept progress and get modernized with time, Computer languages also have their ages. Programming languages were not used to be as developed and complete as we experience them now. In fact, they were more complex and difficult long ago. So, let us go through these generations of computer languages which are 5 in total.
GENERATIONS OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES.
When we generally talk about, history of programming languages in detail, we can see two kinds of them!
- High-level Programming Languages:
A high–level language is a programming language that enables a programmer to write programs that are more or less independent of a particular type of computer. A program written in a high-level language must be changed into machine language, by a compiler or interpreter. Such languages are considered high–level because they are closer to human languages and further from machine languages
- Low-level Programming language:
In computer science, a low–level programming language is a programming language that provides little or no thought from a computer’s instruction set architecture—commands or functions in the language map closely to processor instructions.
First Generation Programming Language:
First generation language is also known as Machine Language. These are the set of instructions that can be directly performed by CPU. Usually, these instructions are written in order of 0 ’s and 1’s and which are known as binary code.
This was the hardest era of computer languages and programming as is was very complex to write a machine code plus it was a very long process.
Second Generation Language:
The second generation programming language is assembly language. Assembly language is the human-readable notation for the machine language used to control specific computer operations. An assembly language programmer writes instructions using symbolic instruction codes that are meaningful abbreviations or mnemonics. An assembler is a program that translates assembly language into machine language.
Third Generation Programming Language:
The third generation of programming language or procedural language uses a series of English-like words, that are closer to human language, to write instructions.
High-level programming languages make complex programming simpler and easier to read, write and maintain. Programs drafted in a high-level programming language must be translated into machine language by a compiler or interpreter. PASCAL, FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, C and C++ are examples of third generation programming languages.
Fourth Generation Programming Language :
The fourth generation programming language or non-procedural language, often abbreviated as 4GL, enables users to access data in a database. A very high-level programming language is often referred to as goal-oriented programming language because it is usually limited to a very specific application and it might use syntax that is never used in other programming languages. SQL, NOMAD and FOCUS are examples of fourth generation programming languages. Here Object-oriented is very important term as it opened new concepts in languages of computer
Fifth Generation Programming Language:
The fifth generation programming language or visual programming language is also known as natural language. Provides a visual or graphical interface, called a visual programming environment, for creating source codes. Fifth generation programming allows people to interact with computers without needing any specialized knowledge. People can talk to computers and the voice recognition systems can convert spoken sounds into written words. Prolog and Mercury are the best known fifth-generation languages.
MKFHBLOGS 