Programming language generations

Article summary

Programming languages have been classified into several programming language generations. This series of buzzwords was popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Historically, this classification was used to indicate increasing power of programming styles. Later writers have somewhat redefined the meanings as distinctions previously seen as important became less significant to current practice. The terms first-generation and second-generation programming language were not used prior to the coining of the term third-generation. None of these three terms are mentioned in early compendiums of programming languages. As early as May 1966 computers were advertised as third generation computers. This buzzword was reused to advertise programming languages as third generation languages within the same year. It is synonymous to the buzzword high-level programming language which was coined 1964 or a bit earlier . In 1957 Bob Bemer still called programming with a high-level language “automatic programming”. Machine code languages were retroactively named first generation and assembly languages second generation languages. Niklaus Wirth, who designed Pascal, wrote in 2008 that high-level language was “a poorly understood buzzword” and contrasted C with high-level programming languages. Around 1973 fourth-generation language was coined.…

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1. publication date: 2007 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

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Bibliography

1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1376621400