Programming languages — Code With X

2 min readAug 16, 2020

So first thing first..What is a programming language?
A programming language is a computer language that closes to the human language(English), use to give instructions to computers to do a specific task. Usually, programming languages are used by programmers to develop software, scripts, etc.

When did it all start? The story of programming languages begun with Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.
Ada Lovelace is the first computer programmer, and she wrote a program for the analytical engine.
There are five generations of computer languages.

First-generation
Second-generation
Third-generation
Fourth-generation
Fifth-generation

First-generation and second-generation computer languages are considered as low-level languages, and the other 3 generations are viewed as high-level languages.
Let’s consider these generations one by one.

01.First-generation(Machine language)

No need to translate. Directly executed by the computer.
Machine dependent. A program that wrote for one specific computer can not use for others. It depends on internal architecture.
Programs execute efficiently and speedily.

02.Second-generation(Assembly language)

Use assembler to covert these programs to machine language.
Use English shortcodes for writing programs. So easy to understand and learn.
Faster than high-level languages.
Machine dependent.

03.Third-generation

Easy to learn and develop
Slower than low-level languages
Not machine-dependent.
Ex-C,C++,Fortran

04.Fourth-generation

Very easy to learn and cost-effective
Use to develop different kinds of software
Need language translater
Not machine dependent
Ex-CSS,SOL

05.Fifth-generation

Mainly use in Artificial intelligence research
Ex-Prolog, Mercury

Every high language needs a language translator to covert their program to machine language. We will discuss the language translator in the next post…

Originally published at https://codewithx.com on August 16, 2020.