Types of Computer Programming Languages

This post was written and published with the intention of elaborating on the various categories of computer programming languages, as well as providing definitions of and examples for their various applications.

There are basically two types of computer programming languages, as given below:

  1. Low-level language
  2. High-level language

Low-Level Languages

The programming languages that are very close to machine code (0s and 1s) are called low-level programming languages.

The program instructions written in these languages are in binary form.

Types of low-level languages

These are the two types of low-level computer languages.

Machine Language

Machine language, also known as machine code, refers to the binary instructions that can be directly understood by the central processing unit (CPU) of the computer without the need for translation.

The very first iteration of programming languages is sometimes referred to as the machine language generation. The most fundamental language of computers is known as machine language, and the instructions for writing programs in this language are represented as binary numbers.

This language is implemented differently on various computer systems.

The machine language is not simple to pick up and understand. This is due to the fact that 0 and 1 are the only characters that can be used when writing in machine language, which means that all of the codes and programs must be written using those two characters. Because of this, the program not only becomes more difficult to write and comprehend, but it also extends beyond what is reasonable.

Advantages of Machine Language

The only advantage of machine language is that the program runs very fast because no translation program is required for the CPU. You can also refer to "machine language" as the fastest language available.

Disadvantages of Machine Language

Here are some of the main disadvantages of machine languages:

Assembly Language

Because the instructions for a program written in this language are so similar to those written in machine language, it is considered to be another low-level programming language.

Assembly language is also known as a second-generation programming language.

With assembly language, a programmer writes instructions using symbolic code instead of binary codes.

Symbolic codes are meaningful abbreviations such as "SUB" for substation operation, "MUL" for multiply operation, and so on. Therefore, this language is also called the "low-level symbolic language."

The set of program instructions written in assembly language are also called "mnemonic code."

Assembly language provides facilities for controlling the hardware.

Advantages of Assembly Language

The following is a list of some of the primary benefits of using assembly language:

Disadvantages of Assembly Languages

The following is a list of the most significant drawbacks associated with using assembly language:

High-Level Languages

Programming languages that are the most similar to the language (English) spoken by humans are known as "high-level languages." The following are some examples of high-level languages:

The high-level languages are very similar to the English language. The instructions for the program are written using English words, such as "print" and "input," amongst other examples. However, when it comes to writing program instructions, each high-level language has its own set of rules and grammar. The structure of these rules is referred to as the syntax of the language.

Before being able to be utilized, the computer program that was written in a high-level language needs to be converted into machine code. There is a translator program designed specifically for each high-level language.

Advantages of High-Level Languages

Programming languages with a high level of abstraction come with a number of benefits. The following are the most significant benefits:

Disadvantages of High-Level Language

There are two main limitations of high-level languages:

Types of High-level Languages

The high-level programming languages can be further broken down into the following categories:

Procedural Languages

Procedural languages are also known as third generation languages (3GLs). In a procedural language, a program is designed using procedures.

A procedure is a sequence of instructions with a unique name. The instructions of the procedure are executed with reference to its name.

In procedural programming languages, the program instructions are written in a sequence or in a specific order in which they must be executed to solve a specific problem. It means that the order of program instructions is very important.

Some popular procedural languages are described below:

Non-procedural languages

Non-procedural programming languages are also known as fourth-generation languages. In non-procedural programming languages, the order of program instructions is not important. Its importance is given only to what is to be done.

With a non-procedural language, the user or programmer writes English-like instructions to retrieve data from databases. These languages are easier to use than procedural languages. These languages provide the user-friendly program development tools needed to write instructions. The programmers do not have to spend a lot of time coding it.

The most important non-procedural languages and tools are discussed below:

Object-Oriented Programming Languages

It wasn't until the late 1960s that the idea of object-oriented programming was first presented, but in recent decades, it has emerged as the dominant method for creating new software.

The software is developed through the use of a collection of interacting objects when object-oriented programming is used. A component of a computer program is known as an object. This component includes a data structure and a collection of modules. Accessing the data contained within an object is accomplished through the use of the modules, which are also referred to as methods. An object-oriented approach is the most up-to-date method that can be used to design the program. Using objects to build programs is the focus of this approach, which makes the process very straightforward. After being designed for one piece of software, an object can be repurposed for use in any other piece of software.

C++ and Java are currently the two object-oriented programming (OOP) languages that have the most users and are used the most frequently.

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