Ten Most important computer programming languages

Most important programming language of computer are listed below:

1. Basic :

In the early days of computing before microcomputers, display devices, and sophisticated communications systems- writing and debugging pro­grams were painfully slow processes. Users and programmers submitted their punched-card programs to the computer system operator and then waited as much as several hours or a day or two for the results.

Often the program didn’t work, and the user or programmer received a list of cryptic error messages. These had to be properly diagnosed, the bugs corrected, and the program resubmitted.

Getting even a modest program written and debugged could take several days or weeks. Thus, it took a great deal of persistence to be successful at programming, and many people just weren’t interested.

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Nonetheless, computer scholars realized that the computer was potentially a tool that would benefit noncomputer professionals in many ways if only they could be encouraged to learn programming.

Clearly there was a need for an easy-to-learn beginner’s language that would work in a “friendly,” nonfrustrating programming environment.

BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was designed to meet this need. It was developed at Dartmouth College in conjunction with the world’s first time-sharing system.

With BASIC, students commu­nicated with the computer through their own terminals, and turnaround time usually was a matter of seconds. A modest program could easily be conceived, coded, and debugged in a few hours.

BASIC also proved to be extremely easy to learn, and many students found it possible to write pro­grams after only a few hours of training.

Over the years, BASIC has evolved into one of the most popular and widely available programming languages.

Because it is easy to use and the storage requirements for its language translator are small, it works well on almost all general-purpose microcomputers.

The many versions of BASIC available range from “stripped-down” ones suitable for pocket computers to powerful mainframe versions that rival the processing power of COBOL.

2. Pascal :

Pascal, named after the mathematician Blaise Pascal, is a relatively new programming language. It was developed about 1970 by Professor Niklaus Wirth of Zurich, Switzerland.

3. COBOL :

COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), first introduced in the early 1960s, is the primary business transaction processing language in use today.

Until it appeared, there was no language particularly suited to applications such as payroll, billing, payables, receivables, and general ledger- all of which typify business transaction processing.

After all, the early language pioneers were engineers and mathematicians, not account­ants. As more and more businesses purchased computer systems, how­ever, the need for a transaction processing oriented language became ap­parent.

Representatives from the major computer manufacturers met in Washington with users from industry and government to discuss such a product. Subsequently they formed a committee to draft a language, and the result was COBOL.

4. FORTRAN :

FORTRAN (Formula Translator), which dates back to 1954, has the dis­tinction of being the first high-level programming language to enjoy wide use. It has shown remarkable “staying power” and today is the oldest surviving commercial high-level language.

In a world where everything seems to be changing rapidly, FORTRAN has been altered remarkably little in 30 years.

FORTRAN was designed by scientists and is oriented toward scientific and engineering problem solving.

5. PL/1 :

PL/1 (Programming Language 1) was introduced in the mid-1960s by IBM as a general purpose language; that is, it was designed for both scientific and business transaction processing applications.

It’s an extremely power­ful language, with strong capabilities for structured programming. Variants of PL/1, such as PL/C (created at Cornell) have been developed for teach­ing purposes.

Despite PL/l’s high credentials, however, it has been used less widely than one might expect. There are several reasons for this. First, the language initially was available only on IBM machines, and other computer manu­facturers were slow to adopt it on their equipment.

Since IBM mainframes were less common in academic settings than in industry, few programmers learned to use PL/1 in school. Second, COBOL had a substantial head start in business transaction processing.

Not only did companies have sub­stantial investments in working COBOL programs, but also COBOL pro­grammers have always been more available in the marketplace.

Third, BA­SIC and FORTRAN already were well entrenched in scientific, engineering, and business problem solving applications.

They were generally perceived as easier to use than PL/1, and their language translators were more widely available. Nonetheless, PL/1 developed a respectable following, and those that use the language swear by it.

6. APL :

APL (A Programming Language) began in the early 1960s as a mathemati­cal notation created by a Harvard professor to teach courses. Somewhere along the way, through the support of IBM, it evolved into a full-blown programming language.

The major objective of APL is to enable programmers to code rapidly. It is a tremendously compact language and can be used only with a special keyboard. Like BASIC, it is highly interactive.

APL has two modes of operation: calculator and program. In the calculator mode, APL is like a powerful desk calculator. The user types in an APL expression, and the computer system instantly supplies a response.

APL uses a special set of symbols to enable users to perform complex math­ematical computations in a single step.

Supporters claim the APL programs can be written in a minute fractions of the time it takes to write comparable FORTRAN programs. After all, look at all the code you can cram into a single statement.

Critics argue that APL is difficult to learn because it uses too many special symbols and employs certain programming conventions that are completely contrary to those of other languages.

Most APL programs are extremely difficult for anyone but the original programmer to read. This trait is often acceptable in scien­tific and engineering environments, however, where programs often have short useful lives.

7. ADA:

For many years, much of the software created for the armed services was written in machine or assembly language. In the 1970s, many branches of the services began to convert applications to high-level languages.

There was no single standard for all the branches, however, the systems devel­oped by one branch were not always compatible with those of the others. The US.

Department of Defense soon declared a moratorium on these di­vergent efforts and directed the branches to cooperate in creating a single language standard.

Existing languages were surveyed and, for one reason or structured language, Ada, named after the Countess of Lovelace, a colleague of the nineteenth-century computer pioneer Charles Babbage.

Ada’s design is based largely on Pascal. Ada, however, is a much bigger and more complex language. It includes several features that have no coun­terparts in Pascal, such as real time control of tasks, exception handling, and abstract data types.

It is still too early to tell what effect Ada will have both within the beyond the Department of Defense.

Its supports predict that the language will be widely embraced by both the academic and business worlds. Critics point to PL/1 and history. “Who,” they ask, “needs another programming lan­guage?”

8. C:

Created under the auspices of Bell Labs in the early 1970s, is a high-level language with many of the advantages of an assembly language. It’s so named simply because its earlier versions were called A and B.

Today, due largely to its role in packaged software development and, to a lesser de­gree, its association with the UNIX operating system, C is one of the hot­test languages for programmers to learn.

For the past several years, the packaged applications software market has been extremely competitive.

Once a software product- such as a word proc­essor, spreadsheet, or database management system- is developed for one microcomputer system, it becomes crucial to develop versions of it for the other leading microcomputer systems as soon as possible. The earlier a software product is available in the marketplace, the harder it is for compet­ing products to make a go of it.

Thus, packaged software developers need a “mid-range” language- one that has both the portability of a high-level language like Pascal and the execution efficiency of a low-level assembly language.

C, which is sometimes referred to as a “portable assembly lan­guage, ” conveniently fills this niche. C is also structured, which makes modifications easy to implement and test, and is far easier to learn than an assembly language.

UNIX as a popular operating system on smaller computers, is largely writ­ten in C; so, as UNIX’s popularity continues to grow, so does C’s. C and UNIX also share the same “toolkit” programming approach- that is, if a feature you like isn’t available in the language, you can add it yourself.

C is used primarily by computer professionals. Code written in C looks somewhat like that in Pascal. However, C is not a language for beginners.

9. C++:

C++ is a general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as a mid­dle-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup start­ing in 1979 at Bell Labs as an enhancement to the C programming language and originally named “C with Classes”.

It was renamed to C++ in 1983. C++ is widely used in the software industry. Some of its application do­mains include systems software, application software, device drivers, em­bedded software, high-performance server and client applications, and entertainment software such as video games.

Several groups provide both free and proprietary C++ compiler software, including the GNU Project, Microsoft, Intel, Borland and others.

10. Logo :

Logo is a programming language that also represents a philosophy of learning. It was developed in the 1970s by Seymour Peymour Paepert of MIT, who incorporated into its specification some of the learning theories of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget.

Logo has been very popular with chil­dren, many of whom find it both easy to learn and exciting.

Logo is easy to learn because its instructions are relatively straightfor­ward. For example, the following program,

FORWARD 25 RIGHT 90

FORWARD 25 RIGHT 90

FORWARD 25 RIGHT 90

FORWARD 25 RIGHT 90

creates a square with 25 units on a side. The first command draws one side and points the cursor like device on the screen 90 degrees to the right. The second command draws the second side, and so forth. As the programmer becomes more advanced, he or she can use a more sophisticated command to do the same thing, for example,

Repeat 4 (Forward 25 Right 90):

You can appreciate how easy Logo is to learn and use when you consider how you would draw a square in another language you are familiar with.

Logo is exciting because it has a lot of psychological hooks that get chil­dren involved. For example, one of Logo’s strengths is graphics- and how many kids do you know who prefer writing accounting programs to draw­ing pictures on a screen?

Also, Logo calls its triangle-shaped, cursor like device a turtle. The turtle can be given commands such as FORWARD (to move), RIGHT or LEFT (to turn), PENUP (to raise the turtle’s pen and allow it to move without drawing a line), and PENDOWN (to lower the pen).

Inhibitions about using a computer are reduced as children imagine the cursor like device as an animal leaving a trail on the screen and not just a boring, insensitive, run-of-the-mill cursor. Logo’s turtle graphics have found their way into other languages as well, including Pascal.