Computer 6
February 11, 2021
Topic: Computer Language
I. Motivation/Presentation:
Q1: How does it become easier for us to communicate with other people?
Q2: How can we able to communicate to a computer to do the task
that it needs to perform for us?
Q:3 Do we use the same language?
• To communicate with a
computer, we need a
• Language is a medium to language which it can
express what we think and understand.
feel.
II. Discussion:
Question: Are you familiar with this image?
• Program – is a set of commands or instructions that is required to process input data into
computers and get an output.
• Computer language or Program is also known as Programming Language.
Four Categories of Computer Language
1. The low-level languages – are machine-dependent computer languages.
A computer understands either binary form (0s, 1s) of low-level language or the language that is
very close to it.
Two Types:
1. Machine Language (First Generation Computer 1942-1955)
It was the first programming language that was used in the computers.
In this, the computer is instructed using binary form(codes) – 1s (ones as ON state) and 0s
(zeroes as OFF state)
Advantages:
• The CPU understands and executes the commands given in this form directly.
• For this reason, the machine language programs are executed very fast(less code) with a very
low memory utilization(use) in contrast to the programs which are written in some other
language.
Disadvantages:
• Such kind of language is very difficult, and time consuming to learn, write and debug as a
programmer needs to memories hundreds of codes.
• Each computer has its own machine language which is different from the other computers. It
may or not run on another computer.
2. Assembly Language (Second Generation 1995-1964)
• Uses Mnemonic codes or symbols instead of 0s and 1s.
• Mnemonic Codes are the letter codes written in English to give instructions to the computer.
• It is a machine-dependent language, meaning it is a program written for one computer may or
may not work on any other computer. Each processor has its own set of instructions to work.
3. High-Level Language (Third Generation)
• It is NOT a machine-dependent language (can run/used in many computers).
• These are user-friendly and use simple English letters and words and mathematical symbols.
• Programs written in these languages can be used on different processors easily.
• It is portable(transferable), useful in debugging.
Portability -the ability of software to be transferred from one machine or system to another.
Debugging – the ability to locate and to fix error by removing them successfully.
Examples of high-level languages codes
4. Latest High-level language (Fourth Generation)
• It is closer to human languages than any other high-level languages used.
• Most 4GLs(4th Gen. Language) are used to access databases, report generations, data
manipulations and analysis.
A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can be easily accessed, managed and
updated.
Some features are:
• Machine independent
• Highly user-friendly (easy to use by programmers)
• Highly portable and platform dependent
• High speed of execution
• Easy application development tools in less time and at minimum cost
• Minimal user skills required to obtain results.
Examples of latest high-level languages