Programming Languages Essay

The advent of the modern era gave rise to the growth of the importance of computers and technology to the lives of the humans. The ease with which using computers is associated has attracted users to further improve the way computers can better serve humans. One of the ways that computer was improved was through programming languages. Programming languages was developed and was further enhanced. A programming language is defined as an artificial language essential in writing instructions (â€Å"Programming Language†) and computer programs in a series of instructions that humans can understand and compilers and linkers can read. This program is then translated into a machine code that the computer can understand and run (Bolton). Programming languages did not come easy, as its first inventions were difficult to operate. In the 1940s, computer programs required programmers to write the sequences of digits that the computer performed. It was not just difficult but was bound to errors. Programmers were supposed to write memory locations. This was not possible at all times when there are errors (â€Å"Programming Language†). This proved to be inefficient and slow. Soon computer languages were developed to address these problems (Bolton). Some of the programming languages used then are Fortran, Cobol, and Basic. These were the programming languages that were used during the 1960s and the 1970s (Bolton). Fortran, which stands the for Formula Translation, was the first language to be developed by IBM during the late 1950s. This language gives importance to the efficiency of compilation and execution. Cobol, on the other hand, was developed during the 1960s as a business application language for mini and mainframe programming (â€Å"Cobol†). Another programming language that was developed in 1960s that was used for microcomputer programming purposes is BASIC (â€Å"Programming Language†). It stands for Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. BASIC was developed to be an alternative for Fortran (Smillie). Today, the widely used programming languages are C, C++, and Java. The C programming language was developed in 1970s at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for the Operating Systems (Bolton), and was used for commercial applications (â€Å"Programming Language†). It was developed mainly as a systems language for the UNIX environment (Smillie). It is still used today on Unix and Linux systems (Bolton). The C++ programming language, on the other hand, was developed in 1980s at AT&T Bell Laboratories (â€Å"Programming Language†) and is the oldest among the three (Akhverdyan). Its developers considered it to be a superset of C, and both were used for the introductory computing courses (Smillie). The primary purpose for developing the language was adding Object Oriented Programming to C (Bolton). The computer programming industry liked to use C++ because it allows the allocation of memory and deleting it whenever the user wants. Moreover, C++ contains the features that Java offers, and it allows the user to make the program in an â€Å"object oriented manner† (Akhverdyan). Java was developed by Sun, mainly designed to write programs for computer chips in electronic appliances. Later on, Java was discovered to be ideal for designing and implementing programs for the Internet (Smillie). It is easier to use because its commands are English based, and not in numeric codes. Further, humans can easily read and write in Java (Leahy). It is better than the previously mentioned programming languages because it has an applet, a feature that only Java has. Applets are used in the World Wide Web. Another feature of Java is that it is cross-platform, which means that the code written in Windows can be compiled in other operating systems (Bolton). Other characteristics of Java are its ease of use, security, reliability and platform independence (Leahy). Works Cited Akhverdyan, Hamik. 2009 January 5. How to Choose the Right Programming Language. Associated Content. 12 January 2009 . Bolton, David. 2009. What is a Programming Language? Associated Content. 12 January 2009 . â€Å"Cobol. † 2008. Answers. com. 12 January 2009 . Leahy, Paul. 2009. What is Java? About. com. 12 January 2009 . â€Å"Programming Language. † 2008. Answers. com. 12 January 2009 . Smillie, Keith. 2006. â€Å"Programming Then and Now: From the LGP-30 to the laptop. † 12 January 2009 .