A Glance of Programming Languages
Somehow I just want to write things about programming languages.
You cannot have any application without it. Imagine that when you turn on your computer, browse internet, write document, play a game, listen to music, or even just clicking icons; those applications were made with enormous numbers of programming codes.
A programming language is a set of keywords (commands) and grammar rules (syntax) designed for creating instructions that a computer can ultimately process or carry out.
Programming languages are categorized based on the levels, generations, and paradigm.
By levels, programming languages are categorized into two, low-level language and high-level language. Low-level language typically includes commands that specially made for particular microprocessor family (e.g.: Intel, AMD, PowerPC) and it is designated to make instructions for the lowest level of the computer’s hardware, such as the processor, registers, and RAM locations. Machine languages and assembly languages are low-level. They constitute of binary digits (1s and 0s). Differently, high-level language uses commands words and grammar based on human languages that will be translated to assembly/machine language. Java, C, BASIC are examples of high-level. The commands are using human words such as PRINT, WRITE, etc.
By generation, along with the computer (see the previous article), the programming language develops through generations. The first generation is what we call machine language. The second generation is assembly language. Programmers can use abbreviated command words, called operation codes, such as ADD but still for specific machine. The third generation languages used easy command words, such as PRINT and OUTPUT. Here, the examples are COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), Fortran (Formula Translator), Pascal, and BASIC. In 1969, scientists develop the fourth-generation languages, which more closely resemble human languages, such as SQL (Structured Query Language) and RPG (Report Program Generator). SQL are used in database applications. In 1982, a group of Japanese researchers began work on Prolog (Programming in Logic) which is a declarative language and called by some experts the fifth-generation language. Some disagree with this classification and instead define fifth-generation languages as those that allow programmers to use graphical or visual tools to construct program.
Programming paradigm is a way of conceptualizing and structuring the tasks a computer performs. By this paradigm, programming languages are divided into “procedural”, “Object-oriented”, “declarative”, “functional”, and “Event-driven”.
(Taken and edited from Computer Concepts 2010 written by JJ Parsons and Dan Oja)
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