PROGRAM AND PROGRAMING LANGUAGE.

  

WHAT IS PROGRAM?

“A program is a set of instructions that a computer uses to perform a specific  task.”

 As a verb, to program is the writing of statements or commands that instruct the computer how to process data. There are several programming languages used to program a computer.

 As a noun, a program is also called an application or software, is a set of instructions that process input, manipulate data, and output a result. For example, Microsoft Word is a word processing application that allows users to create and write documents. A browser, such as the one you are using to view this page, is an application.

A program file must be an executable file and for software programs running Microsoft Windows end with a file extension of .EXE, .COM, or .PIF. Executing these files runs the program and allows it to be used on the computer. On an Apple Macintosh computer, a program ends with .APP.

A  program is like a computer’s recipe. It contains a list of ingredients (called variables, which can represent numeric data, text, or images) and a list of directions (called statements) that tell the computer how to execute a specific task.

“As we talked about what is program and  now we will discuss about programming language in which programs   are written.”

 

 

WHAT IS PROGRAMING LANGUAGE?

 

 writing instructions for the computer and the computer does what we tell it to do. This is called programming. The instructions are in programming language. The point to be noted is that  What actually happens under the hood?

A computer itself  isn’t smart. but they’re powerful and have the potential to carry out tasks much faster than a human. But computers needs some instructions to tell what to do These instructions are written in programming language .  These instructions are translated to a readable format which a computer can understand.

AT THIS POINT there are two types of languages:-

1.     High level language .

2.     Low level language.

 

HIGH level language:-

These are the machine-independent programming languages, which are easy to write, read, edit, and understand. They are closer to human and far from computer. High-level programming languages have special keywords, functions, and class libraries. Using these we can easily build a computer program.

The computer does not understand the program written in such languages directly, As the computer understands only Machine code. So, Programming language translators are required to convert a high-level program to its Machine code.

Some high level languages are:-

·         C++

·         C#

·         COBOL.

·         FORTRAN.

·         Java.

·         JavaScript.

·         Objective C.

·         Pascal.

·         python

 

Languages like Java, Python, JavaScript, C++, C, C#, and others (which are very popular now to develop user-end applications)

LOW level language:-

These are machine-dependent programming languages such as Binary (Machine code) and Assembly language. Since computers can only understand Binary language which is in the form of 0's and 1's (Signals - that can be either true or false). So low level programming languages are the best way to give signals (Binary Instructions) to the computer directly but are not that human friendly.

There are two terms came machine code and assembly language.

   Machine Code (Binary Language) does not need an interpreter or compiler because the computer understands these signals directly.

The assembly language needs to be converted to equivalent Binary code so that the computer can understand the instructions written in Assembly. Assembler is used to convert an assembly code to its equivalent Binary code.

Conclusion

“Low-Level programming language programs are faster than High-Level programming language programs as they have fewer keywords, symbols and there is no need to convert it into Machine Code.”

 

We  discussed  program and programming language and its types .now I am going to explain the generations of programming language .

GENERATIONS OF PROGRAMING LANGUAGE

     

There are five GENERATIONS:-

These generations starts from 0’s and 1’s

First Generation Languages use a binary code that consists of strings of only zeroes (0) and ones. (1). The use of binary code is difficult to learn and use. The first computer uses vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory. Not so practical

Second Generation Languages

Second Generation Languages uses mnemonics code that consists of very short words for commands. Assembly language programs need to be converted into machine language by an assembler before it can be run.

                                       

    Assembly language is a low-level programming language for a computer or other programmable device specific to a particular computer architecture in contrast to most high-level programming languages, which are generally portable across multiple systems. Assembly language is converted into executable machine code by a utility program referred to as an assembler like NASM, MASM, etc.

 

Third Generation Language

Third Generation Languages also refereed to as high – level languages introduced data structures and control structures. Third generation languages are portable or machine independent where a program written from one computer can also be use by another computer.

                            

A high-level language is a programming language designed to simplify computer programming. It is “high-level” since it is several steps removed from the actual code run on a computer’s processor. High-level source code contains easy-to-read syntax that is later converted into a low-level language, which can be recognized and run by a specific CPU.

 

Fourth Generation Language:

          A fourth-generation programming language (4GL) is any computer programming language that belongs to a class of languages envisioned as advancement upon third-generation programming languages (3GL). Each of the programming language generations aims to provide a higher level of abstraction of the internal computer hardware details, making the language more programmer-friendly, powerful, and versatile.

    Fourth Generation Languages are more advance than traditional high – level Programming languages because it uses English – like commands that do not require traditional input-process-output. The programmer focuses on what needs to be done rather than how to do it and it also incorporates graphical development environments.

Fifth Generation Language:

   A fifth-generation programming language (5GL) is any programming language based on problem-solving using constraints given to the program, rather than using an algorithm written by a programmer. Most constraint-based and logic programming languages and some other declarative languages are fifth-generation languages. It is based on artificial intelligence.

Four more stay tuned.