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Generations, Languages
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Programming languages are the primary tools for creating
software. As of 2002, hundreds exist, some more used than
others, and each claiming to be the best. In contrast, in the days
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when computers were being developed there was just one
language—machine language. Computer Languages

Programming Languages
The concept of language generations, sometimes called levels, is
closely connected to the advances in technology that brought Procedural Languages
about computer generations. The four generations of languages
Database Programming
are machine language, assembly language, high-level language,
Language
and very high-level language.
Algol-60 Report
First Generation: Machine Language
Simulation Language
Programming of the first stored-program computer systems was
Drav.
performed in machine language. This is the lowest level of
programming language. All the commands and data values are Lang.

given in ones and zeros, corresponding to the "on" and "off"

electrical states in a computer.

In the 1950s each computer had its own native language, and
programmers had primitive systems for combining numbers to
represent instructions such as add and compare. Similarities exist
between different brands of machine language. For example, they
all have instructions for the four basic arithmetic operations, for
comparing pairs of numbers, and for repeating instructions.
Different brands of machine language are different languages,
however, and a computer cannot understand programs written in NEARBY TERMS

another machine language.

Genesee & Wyoming Inc.

In machine language, all instructions, memory locations, numbers, Genesee Community College: Narrative

and characters are represented in strings of zeros and ones. Description

Although machine-language programs are typically displayed with Genesee Community College: Tabular

the binary numbers translated into octal (base-8) or hexadecimal Data

(base-16), these programs are not easy for humans to read, write, Genesis And Polygenesis
or debug. Genesis Health Ventures, Inc.

Genesis Microchip Inc.

The programming process became easier with the development of
assembly language, a language that is logically equivalent to
machine language but is easier for people to read, write, and
understand.

Second Generation: Assembly Language

Assembly languages are symbolic programming languages that
use symbolic notation to represent machine-language instructions.
Symbolic programming languages are strongly connected to
machine language and the internal architecture of the computer
system on which they are used. They are called low-level
languages because they are so closely related to the machines.
Nearly all computer systems have an assembly language available
for use.

Assembly language was developed in the mid-1950s and was

considered a great leap forward because it uses mnemonic
codes, or easy-to-remember abbreviations, rather than numbers.
Examples of these codes include A for add, CMP for compare, MP
for multiply, and STO for storing information into memory. Like
programs written in other programming languages, assembly
language programs consist of a series of individual statements or
instructions that tell the computer what to do.

Normally an assembly language statement consists of a label, an

operation code, and one or more operands . Labels are used to
identify and reference instructions in the program. The operation
code is a symbolic notation that specifies the particular operation
to be performed, such as move, add, subtract, or compare. The
operand represents the register or the location in main memory
where the data to be processed is located. However, the format of
the statement and the exact instructions available will vary from
machine to machine because the language is directly related to
the internal architecture of the computer and is not designed to be
machine-independent. Machine dependence is a significant
disadvantage of assembly language. A program coded in
assembly language for one machine will not run on machines from
a different or sometimes even the same manufacturer.

The principal advantage of assembly language is that programs

can be very efficient in terms of execution time and main memory
usage. Nearly every instruction is written on a one-for-one basis
with machine language. Since all the instructions of a computer
are available to the assembly language programmer, the
programmer can readily manipulate individual records, fields within
records, characters within fields, and even bits within bytes .

Programs written in assembly language require a translator to

convert them into machine language. An assembly language
instruction for multiply, MP, has no meaning to the computer
because it only understands commands in the form of 11010110.
Therefore, a program called an assembler is needed to translate
each assembly language instruction into a machine-language
instruction.

Although assembly languages are an improvement over machine

language, they still require that the programmer think on the
machine's level. Because the level of detail required to write
assembly programs is very high, it is easy to make mistakes.
Although some programmers still use assembly language to write
parts of applications where speed of execution is critical, such as
video games, most programmers today think and write in very
high-level or fourth-generation languages.

Third Generation: High-Level Language

Third-generation languages spurred the great increase in data
processing that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. During that time,
the number of mainframes in use increased from hundreds to
tens of thousands. The impact of third-generation languages on
society has been huge.

A programming language in which the program statements are not

closely related to the internal characteristics of the computer is
called a high-level language. As a general rule, one statement in a
high-level programming language will expand into several machine
language instructions. This is in contrast to assembly languages,
where one statement normally generates one machine language
instruction. High-level programming languages were developed to
make programming easier and less error-prone.

High-level languages fall somewhere between natural languages

and machine languages, and were developed to make the
programming process more efficient. Languages like FORTRAN
(FORmula TRANslator) and COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented
Language) made it possible for scientists and business people to
write programs using familiar terms instead of obscure machine
instructions. Programmers can now pick from hundreds of high-
level languages.

The first widespread use of high-level languages in the early

1960s changed programming into something quite different from
what it had been. Programs were written in an English-like
manner, making them more convenient to use and giving the
programmer more time to address a client's problems.

Although high-level languages relieve the programmer of

demanding details, they do not provide the flexibility available in
low-level languages. A few high-level languages like C and
FORTH combine some of the flexibility of assembly language with
the power of high-level languages, but these languages are not
well suited to the beginning programmer.

Some third-generation languages were created to serve a specific

purpose, such as controlling industrial robots or creating graphics.
Others are extraordinarily flexible and are considered to be
general-purpose. In the past, the majority of programming
applications were written in BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose
Symbolic Instruction Code), FORTRAN, or COBOL—all
considered to be general-purpose languages. Some other popular
high-level languages today are Pascal, C, and their derivatives.

Again, a translator is needed to translate the symbolic statements

of a high-level language into computer-executable machine
language. The programs that translate high-level programs into
machine language are called interpreters and compilers.
Regardless of which translator is used, one high-level program
statement changes into several machine-language statements.
Each language has many compilers, and there is one for each
type of computer. The machine language generated by one
computer's COBOL compiler, for example, is not the same as the
machine language of some other computer. Therefore, it is
necessary to have a COBOL compiler for each type of computer
on which COBOL programs are to be run.

Using a high-level language makes it easier to write and debug a

program and gives the programmer more time to think about its
overall logic. In addition, high-level programs have the advantage
of being portable between machines. For example, a program
written in standard C can be compiled and run on any computer
with a standard C compiler. Since C compilers are available for all
types of computers, this program can run as written just about
anywhere. However, porting a program to a new machine is not
always easy, and many high-level programs need to be partially
rewritten to adjust to differences between user interfaces,
hardware, compilers, and operating systems.

Fourth Generation: Very High-Level Languages

With each generation, programming languages have become
easier to use and more like natural languages. However, fourth-
generation languages (4GLs) seem to sever connections with the
prior generation because they are basically nonprocedural.
Procedural languages tell the computer how a task is done: add
this, compare that, do this if something is true, and so on, in a very
specific step-by-step manner. In a nonprocedural language, users
define only what they want the computer to do, without supplying
all the details of how something is to be done.

Although there is no agreement on what really constitutes a fourth-

generation language, several characteristics are usually
mentioned:

the instructions are written in English-like sentences;

they are nonprocedural, so users can concentrate on the
"what" instead of the "how";
they increase productivity because programmers type fewer
lines of code to get something done.

An example of a 4GL is the query language that allows a user to

request information from a database with precisely worded
English-like sentences. A query language is used as a database
user interface and hides the specific details of the database from
the user. For example, Structured Query Language (SQL) requires
that the user learn a few rules of syntax and logic , but it is easier
to learn than COBOL or C. It is believed that one can be ten times
more productive in a fourth-generation language than in a third-
generation language.

Consider a request to produce a report showing the total number

of students enrolled in each class, by teacher, in each semester
and year, and with a subtotal for each teacher. In addition, each
new teacher must start on a new page. Using a 4GL, the request
would look similar to this:

TABLE FILE ENROLLMENT

SUM STUDENTS BY SEMESTER BY TEACHER BY CLASS

ON TEACHER SUBTOTAL PAGE BREAK

END

Although some training is required to do even this much, one can

see that it is fairly simple. Conversely, a third-generation language
like COBOL would typically require a few hundred lines of code to
fulfill the same request.

4GLs are still evolving, which makes it difficult to define or

standardize them. A common perception of 4GLs is that they do
not make efficient use of machine resources. The benefits of
getting a program finished more quickly, however, can far outweigh
the extra costs of running it.

Object-Oriented Languages
Smalltalk, developed in the 1970s by Alan Kay at Xerox's Palo Alto
Research Center, was the first object-oriented programming
language. In object-oriented programming, a program is no longer
a series of instructions, but a collection of objects. These objects
contain both data and instructions, are assigned to classes, and
can perform specific tasks. With this approach, programmers can
build programs from pre-existing objects and can use features
from one program in another. This results in faster development
time, reduced maintenance costs, and improved flexibility for
future revisions. Some examples of object-oriented languages are:
C, Java, and Ada (the language developed by the U.S.
Department of Defense).

What will be the next step in the development of programming

languages? Future languages will probably have little in common
with earlier ones. They will likely be much closer to natural
languages.

see also Algol-60 Report; Algorithms.

Ida M. Flynn

Bibliography

Beekman, George. Computer Currents. Navigating Tomorrow's

Technology. New York: Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Co., 1994.

Blissmer, Robert H. Introducing Computers: Concepts, Systems

and Applications. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1992.

Brightman, Richard W., and Jeffrey M. Dimsdale. Using

Computers in an Information Age. Albany, NY: Delmar Publishers
Inc., 1986.

Computer Sciences

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