Computer Languages

Oct 23, 2011 by admin

Just like us, computer also needs a language to communicate so to facilitate that, we use computer languages. A language is a set of codes which can be used to write a program. There are three types of programming languages

1. Machine Level Language

2. Low Level Language

3. High Level Language

1. Machine Level Language: Computer understands information which are made up off zeros (0) and ones (1) and hence uses a binary digits for its operation. This is the only language that computer understands and gives result in. As you can guess programming in this language is very very complicated and takes a lot of time. We generally don’t write programs in machine language but the programs written in other languages needs to be translated to machine language before the program can be executed.

2. Low Level Language: To facilitate programmers and prevent difficulties of writing machine language, Assembly language was developed. In this language, programs can be written in combination of alphabetic and numeric symbols instead of 0′s and 1′s. This language is meaningful and can be easily remembered by programmers. For example we use ADD for Addition, CMP for comparison, SUB for subtraction etc. These symbols are called “mnemonics“. So, a program written in mnemonics is called assembly language program. But one thing that you should remember is that the program written in this language still needs to be translated into machine language before program can be executed. So, we introduce a term called “Assembler” which converts this language into machine readable code. So, this language is also called as Assembly language.

3. High Level Language: This is a more user friendly language. This language is written in English Language with set of rules referred to as syntax. Programming in this language is easier than the other languages. These are very easy to read, write and understand. Again, this language is not directly understood by computer so it must be translated into machine language before the program can be executed. To do so we use a Compiler. A compiler is a program which translates into binary digits. Some examples of high level language are COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), FORTRAN (Formula Translation), BASIC (Beginner’s All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), C, C++ etc.