Evolution of programming languages

Evolution of programming Languages

      All programming languages developed  from the inception can be classified  into four main classes .

    1.First Generation programming  languages (Machine languages )

    2. Second  Generation  programming  languages (Assembly languages)

    3.Third Generation programming  languages (High level languages)

    4.Fourth  Generation  programming  languages (Artificial languages )

      One of the key features apparent  in the evolution of the programming  languages is that the programming languages have become easily understandable and usable over the years .

1)First Generation programming languages 

                            All machine  languages fall into this category.

Common features :-

  ⇛All commands  are based on the binary code symbols 0,1.

  ⇛Coding programs and programming computers are extremely difficult 

  ⇛Depend on the machine type.Therefore ,a program  coded for one processor type may not run on a machine with a different  processor type .

  ⇛Programmer should have comprehensive knowledge about the hardware of the intended computer  system .

2) Second  Generation programming languages 

    These languages  were developed primarily to alleviate the problem of using only the binary symbols 0 and 1 to develop programs.

Common features :-

      ⇛ Commands are represented by symbolic names such as "ADD"  ,"SUB"  .

      ⇛Ability to use symbolic names to store data at memory  location and to retrieve data from  memory  by using these names .

      ⇛Ability  to debug  programs easier  than programs in machine  code.            

      ⇛Depend on machine type

      ⇛Need for programmer  to have comprehensive knowledge about the hardware of computer system .

      • Programs written in Assembly  languages cannot be executed directly on the computer as  assembly  languages  are not understood  by processors.Instead such programs have to be transformed into the machine  language of the intended computer using appropriate  translation  software.Such language translation software that translate programs written  in assembly languages  to machine languages are called "Assemblers".

3)Third Generation programming languages

                Programming languages such as JAVA,PYTHON,C,PHP,MATLAB,VB belongs to this type.

Common features:-

     ⇛Based on languages close to human such as english.

     ⇛Do not depend on a machine.

     ⇛Programs can be developed and debugged easily.

     Like the Assembly languages these languages also cannot be directly understood by machines.Therefore to execute programs

written in these languages they have to be translated to machine code using appropriate software.

4)Fourth Generation Programming Languages

           These languages provide visual environment making it easy

for user to write computer programs.

Common features:-

⇛close to human languages such as english.

⇛Ability to learn the language within the short period of time.

⇛Ability to accomplish a task by using smaller number of commands relative to Third generation.

Programming Language Translation

     ᐅ we have discussed that a computer can execute programs written only in a machine code.Therefore a programme written in any other language has to be translated into machine code by an appropriate language translation software to execute it on the computer. The process of converting a programme from one language to another is termed as Language Translation.There are three techniques for language translation.

• Assemblers
• Compilers
• Interpreters

     1.Assemblers:-

        Assemblers translate assembly languages to machine language which can be recognized by the computer.

2. Compilers :-

            ᐅ Compilers translate all the commands in the program to an object code which can be understand by the computer.Once the program is compiled it can be executed by the machine.C,FORTRAN,JAVA are examples for compiler based programming languages.

                 When compiling programs ,the original program used for the compilation is called the Source Code program and the resulting program is called the Object Code program .The main process what the compiler does is translate source code into object code.During the compilation process ,the compiler also checks  whether the source program is free of errors with respect to the grammar of the programming language(Syntax).If the compiler detects errors, error messages are produced and the compilation process terminates without producing the object code.Then the user must compile program again after correcting the detected errors.The user may have to follow this procedure repeatedly until the program is free of errors.Errors found in the program are called "Bugs" and the process of eliminating bugs from program is called"Debugging"

      example for compiler is GNU GCC/G++ compiler used in C language

3. Interpreters :-

     ᐅUnlike compilers,interpreters do not translate the entire program in to machine code at once.Instead,an interpreter does the translation at the moment the program is run,one line at a time.

As a result the lines of the program have to be translated in to machine code each time the program is run.Therefore,the time taken to run a program of this type is typically greater than the time taken to run  a similar program that has been compiled.

     Visual Basic,Python are examples for such  languages.

see you at next post----------Nigma----------2019/12/03