The computer is one of the daily used tools. We use computers because using them makes our life easier. From shopkeeper to an Engineer, everyone needs to use computers and he uses them to complete his tasks easily. Researchers, data scientists, programmers use it to solve problems. To solve problems, they need to give commands to the computer. The computer receives these commands and executes them. In short, the commands that are given to computers are programs and the language programmers use to give these commands called programming language.
What is Programming Language?
Programming language is a series of specifically defined commands designed by human programmers to give directions to digital computers. Programming languages bridge the gap between human thought and computer binary circuitry.
There are a lot of programming languages. Some of them are:
- C
- C++
- C#
- Java
- JavaScript
- Python
- PHP
- Kotlin
How Computers Understand Programming Language?
Computers do not understand human language. They understand only 0 and 1 or the binary number system. Any command/code programmer gives to the computer that must be expressed in binary code before the computer can perform them. This task of translating programming languages to the functional equivalent of the code in binary or another programming language is being done by the translator.
How do computers understand programs? We already had a basic knowledge of the process. But do we know how humans gave commands to computers long ago? We are going to learn that.
Evolution of Programming Language
In the very beginning, programmers needed to give commands in binary. Back then, everyone needed to know how to program to use a computer. The first-generation programming language is called machine language. It's totally binary numbers. Then came second-generation programming language. These languages are called Assembly language. Both first-generation's machine language and second-generation's assembly languages are low-level programming languages.
Third-generation programming languages were people-oriented programming languages. From here, the rest programming languages are high-level programming languages. Examples are given below:
First Generation Programming Language
Machine Language or code is the first-generation programming language. An example of first-generation programming languages' code is "10101010010001". This language is a low-level programming language.
Second Generation Programming Language
- LDA 34
- ADD #1
- STO 34
These are the code of Second Generation Programming Languages. These were also low-level programming languages.
Third Generation Programming Language
Some third-generation programming languages are:
- Basic
- C
- Python
- Visual
Codes are like 'x=x+1'. These are high-level programming languages.
Fourth-Generation Programming Language
Fourth-generation programming languages are high-level programming languages and many of them use Structured Query Language (SQL) as the basis for operations. Ruby, MatLabs are fourth-generation programming languages.
Fifth Generation Programming Language
Fifth-generation programming languages are natural languages. OPS5 and Mercury are the examples of fifth-generation programming languages.
See also: