Computer Basics - Language of Computer
Language of computer
In all over the world, language is the source of communication among human beings. Different
countries/regions have different languages. Similarly, in order to communicate with the computer user
also needs to have a language that should be understood by the computer. For this purpose, different
languages are developed for performing different types of work on the computer. Basically, languages
are divided into two categories according to their interpretation.
Low Level Languages.
Low level computer languages are machine codes or close to it. Computer cannot understand
instructions given in high level languages or in English. It can only understand and execute instructions
given in the form of machine language i.e. language of 0 and 1. There are two types of low level
languages:
Machine Language.
Assembly Language
Machine Language - It is the lowest and most elementary level of Programming language and was
the first type of programming language to be Developed. Machine Language is basically the only
language which computer Can understand. In fact, a manufacturer designs a computer to obey just
one Language, its machine code, which is represented inside the computer by a String of binary digits
(bits) 0 and 1. The symbol 0 stands for the absence of Electric pulse and 1 for the presence of an
electric pulse . Since a computer is Capable of recognizing electric signals, therefore, it understand
machine Language.
Assembly Language - It was developed to overcome some of the many inconveniences of machine
language. This is another low level but a very important language in which operation codes and
operands are given in the form of alphanumeric symbols instead of 0’s and l’s. These alphanumeric
symbols will be known as mnemonic codes and can have maximum up to 5 letter combination e.g.
ADD for addition, SUB for subtraction, START,LABEL etc. Because of this feature it is also known as
‘Symbolic Programming Language’. This language is also very difficult and needs a lot of practice to
master it because very small
English support is given to this language. The language mainly helps in compiler orientations. The
instructions of the Assembly language will also be converted to machine codes by language translator
to be executed by the computer.
High Level Languages
High level computer languages give formats close to English language and the purpose of developing
high level languages is to enable people to write programs easily and in their own native language
environment (English). High-level languages are basically symbolic languages that use English words
and/or mathematical symbols rather than mnemonic codes. Each instruction in the high level language
is translated into many machine language instructions thus showing one-to-many translation
Types of High Level Languages
Many languages have been developed for achieving different variety of tasks, some are fairly
specialized others are quite general purpose.
These are categorized according to their use as
a) Algebraic Formula-Type Processing. These languages are oriented towards the computational
procedures for solving mathematical and statistical problem
Examples are
BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code).
FORTRAN (Formula Translation).
PL/I (Programming Language, Version 1).
ALGOL (Algorithmic Language).
APL (A Programming Language).
b) Business Data Processing:
These languages emphasize their capabilities for maintaining data processing procedures and files
handling problems.
Examples are:
COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language).
RPG (Report Program Generator
String and List Processing: These are used for string manipulation including search for patterns,
inserting and deleting characters. Examples are:
LISP (List Processing).
Prolog (Program in Logic).
Object Oriented Programming Language
In OOP, the computer program is divided into objects. Examples are:
C++
Java
Visual programming language: these are designed for building Windows-based applications
Examples are:
Visual Basic
Visual Java
Visual C
