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Programming Languages

Article submitted by
- Bai M.N. Gamadia Girls' High School

Asking a dozen programmers to name the best computer language is likely to get a dozen different answers, for there is no best computer language, any more than one natural human language is superior to all the rest.
Programming languages each have a special vocabulary of so-called Keywords. The keywords correspond to particular operations or sequences of operations to be performed by the computer. BASIC is relatively easy to learn and well suited to devising short, simple programs. However long programs in BASIC are difficult to organize. For short programs Pascal may be too cumbersome. Following are some of the programming languages.

1. LISP – (List Processing) is widely used in artificial intelligence research, the branch of computer science concerned with programming computers to imitate human thought. Created in the late 1950s by M.I.T mathematician John McCarthy, LISP is better suited to the task of manipulating symbols than to ordinary number crunching.

2. FORTRAN – (Formula Translator) was created in the mid-1950s by IBM programmers. Used especially for programs involving scientific and mathematical calculations.

3. COBOL – (Common Business Oriented Language) was born at the Pentagon in 1960, the product of a joint effort by the federal govt. and the computer industry. Designed to be easily understood by nonscientists in the business world, the language uses an English-like structure and vocabulary. It is the most popular data-processing language in such institutions as banks and insurance companies.

4. Pascal, named for 17th Century French mathematician Blaise Pascal, was designed by Swiss computer scientist Niklaus Wirth. Regarded as a vital tool for learning the discipline of structured programming, Pascal has since 1983 been the required language for American high-school students taking advanced placement exams in computer science.

5. FORTH(originally named Fourth for “fourth generation computer language”) was the brainchild of programmer Charles Moore, who designed the language in the late 1960s and 1970s as a personal tool for increasing his own productivity. FORTH became more widely used for control applications after Moore employed it to write the software controlling the radio telescope at an Arizona observatory.