Generations of Programming Languages.

Computer programming started with instructions being typed in binary format i.e., with 0 and 1 and it evolved into today's sophisticated programming languages that offer many features to make our task much easier and effective. In the following lines, we are discussing various generations of programming languages that describe the evolution of programming languages.

1. First Generation Programming language (1GL)

A First Generation Programming language is a machine-level programming language or machine language in short. It consists of 1s and 0s Originally, no translator was used to compile or assemble the first-generation language.

The main benefit of programming in a first-generation programming language is that code a user writes can run very fast and efficiently since it is directly executed by the CPU, but machine language is somewhat more difficult to learn than higher generational programming languages, and it is somewhat more difficult to debug and edit if errors occur.

2. Second Generation Programming language (2GL)

A Second Generation Programming language is a term usually used to refer to some form of assembly language. Unlike first-generation programming languages, it can actually be read and written fairly easily by a human as it uses mnemonics to specify instructions. It requires some translation (from assembly language to machine language) to make it useful to a computer.

3. Third Generation Programming language (3GL)

A Third Generation Programming language is a programming language designed to be easier for a human to understand, using normal language like words such if, repeat etc.

A sample fragment might be:

let c=c+2*d

if sales>20000 then

Discount = 10%

Else

Discount=5%

Fortran, ALGOL and COBOL are early examples of this sort of language. Most modern languages (BASIC, C,C++) are also third generation languages.

4. Fourth Generation Programming Language (4GL)

Fourth Generation Programming Language is designed to be closer to natural language than a 3GL language. 4GLs are non-procedural in nature. That is, programmers have just to specify WHAT is required rather than HOW it is to be done, which is done in case of 3GLs. Languages for accessing databases (such as SQL) are often describe as 4GLs. A 4GL language statement might look like this:

EXTRACT ALL CUSTOMERS WHERE "PREVIOUS PURCHASES " TOTAL MORE THAN 10000;

All 4GL are designed to reduce :

programming efforts.
the time it takes to develop software.
the cost of software development

5. Fifth Generation Programming language (5GL)

A fifth-generation programming language is a programming language based around solving problems using constraints entered by the programmer, which the computer uses to solve the given problem.

The main difference between fourth-generation programming language and fifth-generation languages is fourth-generation languages are designed to build specific programs while fifth generation languages are designed to make the computer solve the problem for you. This way the programmer only needs to worry what problems needs to be solved and what conditions need to be met without worrying about how to implement a routine or algorithm to solve them.