CIS11011

ESSENTIALS OF ICT AND PC APPLICATIONS

Lesson 4

MJ Ahamed Sabani
Department of ICT
Faculty of Technology
SEUSL

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Computer Program

■ A computer program is a set of commands and instructions which

tell the computer what to do

■ It has a sequence of instructions to perform specified task by

computer

■ Programs are developed to solve problems using computers

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Computer Programming

The process of developing and implementing a set of commands and

instructions using Programming languages to do specific task by a
computer

■ Computer program instructions can be called program source code

■ The process of programming can also be called program coding

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Computer Programming Languages

■ A computer programming language is a set of rules and symbols

used to construct programs or computer application
■ It provides ways to instruct the computers
■ The “grammatical” rules of a programming language can be called
as syntax
■ It’s a tool for developing an executable model to solve problems
■ More than 2500 programming languages available

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Classification of Computer Programming Languages

■ According to the level

– Low level languages
– High level languages

■ According to the generation

– 1st Generation languages
– 2nd Generation languages
– 3rd Generation languages
– 4th Generation languages
– 5th Generation languages
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Classification of Computer Programming Languages (contd.)

1st Generation
Languages

Low Level
Languages 2nd Generation
Languages

Computer
Programming 3rd Generation
Languages Languages

High Level
Languages 4th Generation
Languages

5th Generation
Languages

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Low level programming languages

■ 1st and 2nd generation programming languages

■ Computer understandable format
■ Closer to computer and its basic structure
■ Extremely efficient, making optimum use of both computer memory
and processing time
■ Very difficult to understand by the human
■ Only the programmers having knowledge about computer
architecture can code

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High level programming languages

■ 3rd ,4th and 5th generation programming languages

■ Computer independent languages
■ Closer to human languages
■ Not much powerful, but reduce the time to program
■ Easy to work and edit by the human
■ Programmers do not need to have advanced knowledge in computer
architecture
■ Rely on the translators to convert into machine understandable
format

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1st Generation languages

■ Machine languages
■ Computer can use these instructions directly
■ CPU natively understand these machine codes
■ No translators needed
■ Very powerful code
■ Mainly uses 1s and 0s (bits)
■ Very difficult to write programs
■ E.g.
– MIPS instruction set

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2nd Generation languages

■ Assembly languages
■ Short names used for instructions rather than the bits
■ Computers can not understand directly
■ It needs to be assembled to execute by computer
■ Assemblers can be used to translate
■ Mostly CPU specific programs
■ Very fast

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3rd Generation languages

■ Closer to human understandable language, but includes some

notations
■ Converters needs to translate into machine readable format
■ This can be done by a machine language system call Compiler
■ Converted machine language program can be called as object code
■ Interpretation can be done by a system program call Interpreter
■ E.g.
– Fortran, ALGOL, and COBOL
– C, C++, C#, Java, BASIC and Pascal

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4th Generation languages

■ Closer to natural language

■ Fewer instructions enough to accomplish a task
■ Able to work with databases
– Queries
– Forms
– Reports
■ E.g.
– Python, Ruby, and Perl

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5th Generation languages

■ Declarative languages
■ Visually and graphically developed interfaces
■ Normally compiled with 3rd and 4th generation languages
■ Functional based instructions
■ Rule or mathematical logic based
■ E.g.
– Prolog, OPS5 and Mercury

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Programming Language Translators

■ There are different types of programming languages are used to

instruct the computer

– However, the basic structure of computers knows only the language with
1s and 0s – Machine Languages
– All programs except machine languages need translators

Translator
Source Code Object Code

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Programming Language Translators (contd.)

■ Three types of programming translators

– Assembler

– Interpreter

– Compiler

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Assembler

■ Assembler is used for converting the code of assembly language (low

level language) into machine level language
■ Self assembler or resident assembler:
– Runs on a computer and produces the machine codes for the same
computer
■ Cross Assembler
– Runs on a computer and produces the machine codes for another
computer

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Interpreter

■ It is a program which is used to translates statements of a language

programs into a machine language
■ It translates one statement (line) into machine code at a time
■ Machine codes will not save permanently
■ It takes less memory and time to run

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Compiler

■ It is a program which is used to translates high level language

programs into a machine language
■ It goes through the entire program and then translates the entire
program into machine codes
■ Machine codes are saved permanently. So that computers can use
to execute program later
■ It takes more memory and time to run

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Compiler and Interpreter

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Major Programming paradigm approaches

■ Imperative programming

■ Declarative programming

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Imperative programming

■ It focuses on HOW to execute, defines control flow as statements that change a

program state
■ Gives full control to developers that are very important in low-level
programming
■ Consists of commands for the computer to perform
■ Developers are more concerned with how to get an answer step by step
■ Its type includes
– Procedure Oriented (procedural) programming
– Object oriented programming
■ E.g.
– Fortran, Java, C, C++

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Declarative programming

■ It focuses on WHAT to execute, defines program logic, but not detailed

control flow
■ It simply expresses the logic of computation
■ It may automate repetitive flow along with simplifying code structure
■ It mainly focuses on end result
■ Its type includes
– Logic programming
– Functional programming
■ E.g.
– Miranda, Erlang, Haskell, Prolog

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Procedure oriented programming

■ The method of break down a programming task into collection of

small parts such functions, variables, data structures, and
subroutines
■ Sequence of actions to be done
■ Top-down approach
■ Less secure –no hiding
■ Overloading is not possible
■ E.g.
– FORTRAN, Pascal, C, VB

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Structured programming

■ Can be called as modular programming

■ Subset of procedural programming
■ Easier to understand and focuses on logical structures
■ It consist of main three control structures
– Sequence
– Selection
■ If, If-else
■ Switch
– Repetition
■ For
■ While do
■ Do while

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Object oriented programming

■ A method of break down a programming tasks into objects that

expose behavior (methods) and attributes using interfaces
■ Uses real world
■ Bottom-up approach
■ More secure –can hide data
■ Overloading is possible
■ E.g.
– C++,C#, JAVA, VB

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Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

■ Software program that is designed to help programmers and developers

to build software
■ It provides many features
– GUI
– Development environment
– Code automation tools
■ Most IDEs include
– Text/ Code editor
– Compiler
– Debugger
■ E.g.
– NetBeans, Eclipse

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