The Evolution of Computer Programming Languages

Computer programming languages have evolved into four generations beginning with languages that were tied to the hardware and evolved into general purpose programming languages. The first generation of programming language were machine languages which were used by the first computers. This generation of programming languages were written in binary, a series of zeros and ones. Binary is difficult to read and errors occurred frequently.

Machine languages were created differently for different for each CPU. Machine dependency was a problem because this programming language would only work for the system that it was written for. When the second generation of programming languages were created, assembly languages did not completely resolve the issue of machine dependency.

The assembly programming language was written in a more simplistic form, and at a higher level of abstraction machine language, instead of a series of zeros and ones there were symbols (percents, dollar and portions of a word and number combination used to make commands. Although assembly languages seem easier than the machine languages; machine dependency is still an existing problem.

Third generation programming languages were converted from English into machine language; compilers were used to convert these instructions. Languages such as C++ and Visual Basic are third generation programs that are well-known today. Important elements of assembly and machine language were not used for this generation of languages. Machine dependency was not a problem encountered by the generation of programming languages; but there was a need for a different type of processor to write each source code. Third generation programming languages are quite difficult to write, but people who are not technically inclined would find it easy to write programs in fourth generation programming languages.