Levels of Programming Languages

Levels of programming languages
There are two major levels namely;
1. Low-level languages
2. High-level languages
These two languages are sub-divided into five generations.
1st and 2nd gen - low level languages
3rd, 4th, and 5th – high level

Xtics of low level languages.
1. They are easily understood by the computer directly i.e. they require little effort to translate into computer understandable form.
2. These languages are hardware oriented and thus not portable i.e. such that a program written for one computer cannot be installed and used on another. They are machine dependent.

1st Gen languages aka machine languages

They are written using binary logic. A program written in machine language might look like this 11100011 00000001 10000011 00011100 10001101 10001111 11111000 10000001
Different CPU’s have different machine codes hence they are machine dependent. Such programs are hard to understand from the programmer’s point of view.
Assembly languages
Were developed in order to overcome the difficulties of understanding and using machine langue. These langues rep’d the 1st attempt to make computer langues readable. They used mnemonics. Mnemonics is described as two or three letter words which is a set of symbolic operation codes. MOV AX, 15 (move 15 to register AX) SUB AX 10 (subtract 10 from the value of AX)
The programs needed an assembler to convert them into machine language that the computer can understand.
The assembly languages are machine dependent. i.e they are specific for a particular machine
High level languages
1. They are very close to human language (are English like) and can be read and understood even by people who are not computer experts.
2. They were machine independent i.e., could work on several different machines. This means that a programmer concentrates on problem solving during the programming session rather than how a machine operates (were problem oriented).
High level languages can be classified into five groups.
1. 3rd gen languages (3gl)
2. 4th gen languages (4gl)
3. 5th gen languages (5gl)
4. Object oriented programming languages
5. Web scripting languages.