generation of programming language

1. Talk on
Generation of Programming Languages
By: Rahul Mishra

2. Charles Babbage
26 Dec 1791 –18 Oct1871
Alfred Tennyson,
5 Aug 1809 -6 Oct 1892
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born."
Every moment one is born.

3. Sir:
In your otherwise beautiful poem "The Vision of Sin" there is a
verse which reads – "Every moment dies a man, Every moment
one is born." It must be manifest that if this were true, the
population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of
birth is slightly in excess of that of death.
I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it
read – "Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 1/16 is born."
The actual figure is so long I cannot get it onto a line, but I believe
the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
Charles Babbage

4. Charles Babbage’s
Analytic Engine 1833
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Earliest known computer
Never fully built
Operations and variables on separate punch cards
Conditional jumps accomplished mechanically by physically
jumping over a band of cards
● Collaborator Lady Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace.
● Babbage first computer scientist. Ada Byron first computer
programmer.

5. Ada Lovelace (10 December 1815 –
27 November 1852)

7. The IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator
(ASCC), called Mark I by Harvard University's staff
Left Side view

8. Right side view

9. Input/Output and control

10. Programming Language Generations
• First Generation
Machine-level programming
languages
– Fast and efficient, executed
directly on the CPU
– Consists only of 0s and 1s
– Difficult for humans to read, write,
and debug

11. Programming Language Generations
• Second Generation
(early 1950s):
– Symbolic assemblers
– Interpreting routines
– Very early compilers
Assembly languages
– Simple mnemonic instructions <opcode> <operands>
– Assembler translates into machine code
– Handcoding in assembly only for low-level needs

12. Simple Assembly program
Move 5 to Ax
mov ax,5
Instruction destination, source
Add Bx to Ax
Add ax,bx

13. Programming Language Generations
• Third Generation
(mid 1950s - present):
High level, general-purpose
– FORTRAN, LISP, COBOL, ALGOL
(Ada, Basic, C, C++, Java, Pascal, Smalltalk, …)
– Easier for humans to read, write, debug
– Compiler translates into machine code before running
– Interpreter translates into machine code at runtime

14. Programming Language Generations
• Fourth Generation (1970s - ):
Specification languages, query languages, report
generators, systems engineering
– Maple, Mathematica, Postscript, SPSS, SQL
• Fifth Generation (1980s - ):
Solve problems using constraints rather than algorithms,
used in Artificial Intelligence
– Prolog

15. Sources
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Sethi, Programming Languages, 2nd edition
Sebasta, Concepts of Programming Languages, 8th edition
Wikipedia (most images)
Old CS 101 and CS 313 lecture notes

16. Thank You
you can find a copy of presentation at
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Any Questions ??