History of programming languages

Programming language is a composition of vocabulary and set of grammatical rules for instructing a computer to perform specific tasks. Each language has a unique set of keywords (words that it understands) and a special syntax for organizing program instructions.

Machine languagesare the languages that the computer actually understands. They are the least complex and the closest to computer hardware programming languages.

They consist entirely of numbers, and only numbers, — memory addresses and operation codes. Each different type of CPU (Central Processing Unit) has its own unique machine language.

Lying between machine languages and high-level languages are languages called assembly languages.

Assembly languages, or assemblers are similar to machine languages, but they are much easier to program in because they allow a programmer to substitute names for numbers: ones and zeros and enable them to use meaningful names for instructions. In fact, the first assembler was simply a system for representing machine instructions with simple mnemonics.

But most often the term programming language refers to high-level languages, such as BASIC, C, C++, COBOL, FORTRAN, Ada, Pascal, etc.

High-level programming languages are more complex than assemblers and much more complex than machine languages. They all fall into two major categories: imperative languages and declarative languages.

Imperative languages describe computation in terms of a program state and statements that change the program state. Imperative programs are a sequence of commands for the computer to perform.

The earliest imperative languages were the machine languages of the original computers. In these languages, instructions were very simple. FORTRAN, Formula translation developed at IBM starting in 1954, was a compiled language that allowed named variables complex expressions, subprograms, and many other features now common in imperative languages.

Declarative programming languages stand in contrast to imperative languages.

Whereas imperative languages give the computer a list of instructions to execute in a particular order, declarative programming describes to the computer a set of conditions and relationships between variables, and then the language executor (an interpreter or compiler) applies a fixed algorithm to these relations to produce a result.

The advantage of declarative languages is that programs written in them are closer to the program specification. Programming, therefore, is at a higher level than in them imperative languages.

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Apple Computers may not have ever been considered as the state of art in

Artificial Intelligence, but a second look should be given. Not only are today's PCs becoming more powerful but AI influence is showing up in them. From Macros to Voice Recognition technology, PCs are becoming our talking buddies. Who else would go surfing with you on short notice- even if it is the net. Who else would care to tell you that you have a business appointment scheduled at 8:35 and 28 seconds and would notify you about it every minute till you told it to shut up. Even with all the abuse we give today's PCs, they still plug away to make us happy. We use PCs more not because they do more or are faster but because they are getting so much easier to use. And their ease of use comes from their use of AI.

Speech Recognition. You tell the computer to do what you want without it having to learn your voice. This implication of AI in Personal computers is still very crude but it does work.

Script recognition. Cursive or Print can be recognized by notepad sized devices. With the pen that accompanies your silicon note pad you can write a little note to yourself which magically changes into computer text if desired. Your computer can read your handwriting. If it can't read it though- perhaps in the future, you can correct it by dictating your letters instead.

Your computer does faster what you could do more tediously. You have taught the computer to do something only by doing it once. In businesses, many times applications are upgraded. But the files must be converted. All of the businesses records but be changed into the new software's type. Macros save the work of conversion of hundred of files by a human by teaching the computer to mimic the actions of the programmer thus teaching the computer a task that it can repeat whenever ordered to do so.

AI is all around us. Don't think the change will be harder on us because AI has been developed to make our lives easier.