The Generations of Programming Languages | Computer Science History

all right this is a continuation to my dive into computer science history if you don't know what i mean by that last video i went over the history of moore's law how it originated how it's been going over the past half century and my predictions for the future and in this video i want to talk about the generations or the history of programming languages as you know them now they're high-level languages and they're low-level languages but did you also know that they're also split up into five generations first second third fourth fifth pretty easy to remember you also hear these referred to as one gl two gl3 gl4 gl5 gl and that obviously means fifth generation language and that's what i want to talk about and what you'll notice is that when we go from one gl to geo it's basically a progression through history where programming languages started and where they are today the first generation programming languages are machine languages which were used to code or to program the first generation computers this was back in the 1940s and it was done by by basically putting in the code into the front panel switches of these systems and it goes directly to the cpu there's no compiler no assembler nothing like that directly to the cpu and it was machine learning which was made up of ones and zeros binary so while it is very easy for the machine to understand it was a lot more difficult for the human to understand now while that is a disadvantage it was also a perk because this made for very fast and very efficient code because it didn't have to go through any assembler compiler the converted it was inputted directly into the cpu and before you say anything yeah well supposedly yeah that people still use this to code or it's technically called instructions you enter the instructions into well in this case directly into the cpu and it is executed by the cpu but instructions code but supposedly still used to program lower level functions of the computer like like like the drivers or firmware hardware interfaces it's kind of weird to hear that people still use this but that's what my research told me so that's what i'm telling you and just so you understand 1gl machine code machine language whatever you want to call it that is well basically when you have your fancy three gl plus languages like java and python our compilers use that code to produce machine language for computers to understand the second generation programming languages are languages associated with assembly language so we started with 1gl machine language now to 2gl assembly language this is our first ever look at a programming language that uses alphabetical letters english words known as mnemonics assembly mnemonics that that's a huge leap from just ones and zeros and what's actually kind of funny about this is that you have some people arguing the fact that it originated in the 1940s and other people arguing the fact that it originated in the 1950s i don't know why this is a debate let's set the record straight here it originated in the 1940s however when you bring that up it uh brings up another debate and that is was it was it created by kathleen booth back in 1947 for the r2 system or was it created by uh david j wheeler that's his name right yeah david j wheeler for edsack in 1949. well 1947 comes before 49 so i would have to say booth however i'm assuming the main argument comes from the fact that it appears that that kathleen booth's first assembly language was more was more based on mathematical operations where when it comes to wheeler's first assembly language it was the first ever mnemonic based so really heavily you know english words alphabet letters rather than what booth did in 1947 whatever it may be and i understand people may be a bit more passionate about this topic just for the record women played a huge role in programming computer science around this time and that's not me simp and that's just the truth but either way that can be a debate for another time either way it was originated in the 1940s i think the main argument for why some people say it was originated in the 1950s well i have three theories one was maybe it's just because of how much it progressed in the 1950s and it got more of a solid disassembly language feel in the 1950s even though it's still originally 1940s or it's because it wasn't popular until the 1950s or the late 1950s actually or and in all honesty this one is just as likely as the previous two someone accidentally mistyped 1950s instead of 1940s so now you have all these lackluster researchers regurgitating 1950s without actually doing any research other than whoever made the initial typo in the first place and it just kind of spread throughout the internet from there back to the actual language now we're still not using a compiler but this is assembly language so we are using a an assembler to convert this language into machine language and this was huge not only did assembly language allow for easier human readability but the assembler made it a lot easier for actual debugging and also introduced more advanced methods of programming like macro and structural programming and while it is a big step for machine language remember this is still a low level language they're mostly used in low-level kernels and drivers and for like process oriented performance based applications like video editing or computer games or graphic manipulation applications and that's it for the low level languages 1gl machine language 2go assembly language now 3gl the third generation programming languages is our first look at a high-level language the first few being fortran in the 1950s basic in the 1960s pascal and c in the 1970s and so on this was our first introduction into variables constants loops error handling aggregate data types flow constructs but the main reason for creating the first 3gl the main goal was to be able to reuse blocks or code blocks they just continued to evolve and now we have plenty of the languages that you and i love today like java and c plus plus and c sharp python i'll address python here in a second and of course we all know that when we use these programming languages now we're using a compiler we need to use the compiler to convert our code into machine language or object code which by the way a compiler was first introduced back in 1952. this part is typically when i say the uses for these languages but i feel like we all know you know how you use java and c plus plus and c sharp and as much as i want to hop right into 4gl i can't just yet because there is another debate i don't know why people just can't agree on these things that is python ruby javascript and a couple others lumped in there some people consider these 4gl while other people consider these advanced 3gl based on everything i see i also consider these 3gl the thing is it it these 3gl languages have 4gl abilities and features but just in a 3gl environment and to be honest with you i think that's the general consensus that these are all three gl languages with the exception of just a few maybe those few are just really loud in all honesty maybe and this is just like a theory of code theory no this is just a theory i think i think that people may have considered these 4gl when they first came out but retrospectively looking at it now that we know what is considered 3g on what is considered 4gl they definitely fit in the category of 3gl much better than a 4gl language which we're about to talk about in a second not to mention the fact that like definitions for these particular things change over time and how it's changed over time all of it just leads to me saying that python uh ruby javascript are three geo languages i just felt like i needed to say that now the real the real the fourth generation languages are just another step closer into having a more human another step closer to human language form of thinking conceptualization that's the best way for me to put it and considering the previous sentiment of not knowing which exact languages are 4gl or what may or may not have been the first 4gl language it's hard for me to put a a date on when exactly it originated however sequel originated in the 1970s sql is a 4gl a fourth generation language with many current 4gl languages being based on sql sql whatever so i'm going to have to say the 1970s the main domains for 4gl are typically database related like database queries and and reporting and things that have to do with the database let me read off most of of the domains for it you have database queries report generators data manipulation analysis and reporting gui creators screen painters and generators and some web development languages and there are actually good amount of 4gl languages but some you may recognize of course are sql there's also octave matlab and progress for gl the fifth generation programming languages are really focused on constraint based languages and some use visual tools to help you develop but when i say constraint based languages that's basically replacing our job we created to replace our job constraint based languages are languages that basically solve the problem without the use of the programmer kind of like artificial intelligence and there are a few other domains in there ops 5 kl1 i know there's a couple more mercury and icad those are all examples of 5gl languages and i know i'm being redundant when i say 5gl languages because that's me saying for the generation language languages but it rolls off tongue better and if you haven't heard of these languages not a problem because i haven't either i feel like i've heard of icap i think i'm just confusing it with autocad probably the thing is in the 1980s this five gl's were thought of the way of the future that all all procedural programming was going to be replaced with constraint based programming programming for one reason or another because of this there's a bunch of money dumped into 5gl research and development back in the 1980s and 90s but it proved to be a little more difficult than what they had thought so it just kind of fell off i mean i do remember back in college i used prologue which is supposedly a5 gl a fifth generation language but that's the only time i've ever used prologue this is the only use case i could ever see myself for using prologue and that's basically where my knowledge of it ends and that's all i want to talk about on the topic to be honest with you it doesn't who really cares if something is considered a 5gl or 4gl or 3gl like i don't know why people arguing about whether or not python is a 3gl or 4gl it doesn't really matter i just wanted to make this video to talk about the history of programming languages and how it progressed from back in the 1940s from machine language to assembly language to you know our beloved 3gl's java python uh c plus plus i'm sure swift would be considered in there as well and then to 4gl and 5gl that well 4gls are actually very widely used you know with matlab and octave and sql of course but then to 5gl which if you ever use if you use a 5gl like actually not just for a hot well even for a hobby let me know in the comment section i'm genuinely curious i'd love to know i hope you enjoyed watching this video as much as i did researching and making it if you have any friends that you think would be interested in this type of content in this video in particular send it over to them and now you don't have to give them a christmas present it's a win-win i would really appreciate a like on this video for algorithmic purposes and my analytics say that most actually a good amount like 75 of all my viewers are not subscribed so make sure you're subscribed look at the subscribe button especially if you made it this far in this video that means you at least a little bit like the content i have to make and i make a lot of videos like this again i mentioned this at the beginning of the video if you did like this video definitely check out the video i made right before this one a history of moore's law because that one is basically like this but with cpus and moore's law rather than programming languages i can't be the only one that likes computer science and history and computer science history you

Channel: ForrestKnight

Views: 29,946

Rating: 4.9642644 out of 5

Keywords: coding, programming, languages, code, software, engineer, developer, computer science, cs, comp sci, computer science history, programming languages, software development, a timeline of programming languages, the generations of programming languages, 1gl, 2gl, 3gl, 4gl, 5gl

Id: ZFIeEV2HfPQ

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020