Scribd
Upload
18 views

Insight Into Theoretical and Applied Informatics I... - (3.1 Computer Programming Languages)

Uploaded by

Jamal Eddine Naamani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
18 views

Insight Into Theoretical and Applied Informatics I... - (3.1 Computer Programming Languages)

Uploaded by

Jamal Eddine Naamani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

3 Computer Programming

3.1 Computer Programming Languages

A programming language is an artificial language used by programmers and


understandable (not necessarily directly) for computers. It is an intermediary in the
transfer instructions from the programmer to the computer which may be the compiler
or interpreter. Before run, the programmer’s instructions are usually translated into
machine language and only then are executed by a computer. In contrast to natural
human languages, computer programming language must be clear so that only a
single meaning can be derived from its sentences. The main objective of the study of
programming languages is to improve the use of programming languages. This means
to increase the programmer’s ability to develop effective programs by growing the
vocabulary of useful programming constructs, but also to allow them a better choice
of programming language in the context of the problems to be solved.

3.1.1 A Very Brief History of Languages and Programming Paradigms

To be executed, a computer program should reside in primary memory (RAM). To be


understandable for processor, a program should be represented in memory as a set
of binary numbers − machine instructions. The instruction pointer, which points to
the next machine instruction to be executed, defines the actual state of the computer.
The execution sequence of a group of machine instructions is called flow of control.
One can say that a program running on a computer is simply a sequence of bytes.
Professionally, this is referred to as machine code. Programs for the first computers
were only written in machine code; this period lasted until the end of the 1940s, and
it is known in informatics as the pre-lingual phase. Each instruction of machine code
performs a task, which is specific for the computer design, i.e. is hardware dependent.
Modern computers still perform numerical machine codes, but they are created
through the compilation of original programs, written by programmers in a high-
Copyright © 2016. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. All rights reserved.

level language. Direct writing of numerical machine code is not often done nowadays,
because it is a painstaking, labor-intensive and error inclined job. The writing of
machine code has been facilitated by assembly languages, which are more palatable
to programmers. An assembly language is a low-level programming language and is
specific to particular computer architecture like a machine code, but it uses mnemonic
technique to aid information retention by programmers. The ability to program in
assembly language is considered to be an indicator of a high level of programming
skills because when the program is written in assembly language the programmer is
responsible of allocating memory and managing the use of processor registers and
other memory resources.

© 2015 Andrzej Yatsko, Walery Susłow


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

Yatsko, Andrzej, and Walery Suslow. Insight into Theoretical and Applied Informatics : Introduction to Information Technologies and Computer
Science, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/univ-people-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4426459.
Created from univ-people-ebooks on 2024-10-24 21:00:41.

You might also like