Programming Languages

There are indeed many computer programming languages in the world of computers. Let's run through some of them here.

Assembly Language
Assembly language is one step beyond the cryptic machine language. Assembly was created quickly as programmers learned the shortcomings of programming in binary. The series of Assembly languages appeared in the 1950s and were designed to be a little more user friendly. Assembly introduced the concept of the variable, where one can assign a symbol to a particular location in memory rather than having to re-type the location in binary every single time. It also contained some pseudo-operations, where one could represent typical op codes in statement form rather than binary. After a programmer writes an Assembly program, he must then run it through the Assembler. The Assembler is like a compiler and translated the Assembly program into the regular machine language.

Fortran
Fortran is the oldest high-level programming language, developed in the 1950s. It is short for Formula Translator. Fortran has many versions. Fortran IV is an early one, made standard in 1966. Fortran-77 has a number of newer features. More recently, Fortran-90 was developed. There are also other renditions, such as F, which is a mix between Fortran and module-oriented languages, and High Performance Fortran. Fortran is a pretty cut-and-dry language. It is not much used anymore except in scientific circles where programs may perform many math calculations. But, since it is a good into to the logic of programming, it is also used in some college courses still as an intro to the subject of programming.

Pascal
A high-level programming language developed by Niklaus Wirth in the 1960s. It is named after a French mathematician. Pascal is known to be very structured and programmers must design Pascal programs very methodically and carefully. For this reason, it is used as a teaching tool. But, that is pretty much where its use stops now. The language is too inflexible and lacks features, making it bad for business applications. Due to this, Wirth developed Modula-2, another programming languages similar to Pascal but having more features.

Cobol
Short for Common Business Oriented Language. It was developed in the late 1950s and is the second oldest high-level language (Fortran is the oldest). Cobol is geared toward the business world. It is a very wordy language. Programs in Cobol are typically longer than programs in other languages. It is a good language, though, and it is easy to read. Many claim it is out-dated now, but it is still in heavy use in the business world and is widely used.

C
C is a high-level programming language developed in Bell Labs in the mid 1970s. It was designed to be a systems programming language, but it has shown itself to be a very flexible language. It was used to write the operating system. Unix used to be written in Assembly language, but was re-written in C in order to make it easier and provide more features. The fact that Unix is written in C has been a major catalyst for the language, since Unix is very much geared to support C programs, obviously. C is the closest to Assembly than any other high-level language. The statements and features make it great for many applications, but the language is also very low-level and can be used to deal with the hardware directly. Since it is very close to machine language in its control of the system, programmers can write very efficient code in C.

C++
A revision to the original C developed in the 1980s. C++ has all the features of C but provides some more efficient operations and object-oriented features. C++ is probably the most popular and hip language right now and is used for many Windows and Mac programs. Tools such as Borland and Visual C++ are used to program in the language and usually come with compilers.

Java
A high-level language developed by Sun Microsystems. It is an object-oriented language like C++, but is simplified so that many common errors can be avoided. Java code is compiled into bytecode and compiled applications have a .class extension. They are run by a Java interpreter. Since these interpreters, called Virtual Machines, exist more most operating systems, Java code can be run on computers with different operating systems. It is a general purpose language, but has features well suited for Internet use and is used quite frequently.

Other Languages
There are tons of other languages out there, all having different features. Perl, SQL and HTML are other common ones, but are designed for special purposes. ADA is a highly refined language with strong multi-processing capabilities. It is a very strong language and was mandated to be used in the Department of Defense of the US.

Programming languages differ only by features and ease of programming. They are all developed by companies for some purpose. But, regardless the language used, all programs are compiled into machine language and run in binary at that level, the ONLY language the machine can understand.