Information and Communication Technologies

BS FOUNDATION SEMESTER

Language Translators and Computer Programming

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Why Programming?
• Computer is just a dumb machine made up of different
electronic components. It is like a box which cannot do anything by
itself.

• It is the user who tells the computer “what it has to do?”

• If we need our computer to perform some task, we first have to teach

the computer in detail “how it will accomplish that task?”

• Once the computer is taught about a particular task, it will completely

obey it but cannot do anything that it is not taught to.
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Why Programming?
• Like the humans, we can teach the computer through
communicating with it using a particular language.

• The language that computer understands is machine language,

also called as binary language. Machine language is the language
of 0s and 1s.

• We give detailed instructions to the computer to solve a

particular task. Programming is the term that refers to teaching,
instructing or giving commands to the computer.
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Why Programming?
• Programming is more about problem solving skills than writing
the code itself.

• Programming teaches you how to understand, analyze and solve

the problems. It enhances your analytical reasoning abilities and
helps you cope with daily real life problems as well.

• Hence learning to program is important because it

develops analytical and problem solving abilities.
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Why Programming?
• The person who gives the instructions (commands) to the
computer is known as the programmer.
• A person who designs and writes computer programs.

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Why Programming?
• Programming is more about problem solving skills than writing
the code itself.

• Programming teaches you how to understand, analyze and solve

the problems. It enhances your analytical reasoning abilities and
helps you cope with daily real life problems as well.

• Hence learning to program is important because it

develops analytical and problem solving abilities.
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 Instruction

• Instruction is any command given to the computer.

• For example:
1) Add two variables A and B
2) Display result
3) Read file

• Each of these is the individual instruction to the computer.

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 Program

NOW DO THIS!
NOW DO
THIS! NOW
DO THIS!
NOW DO THIS!
NOW DO
THIS! 8
 Program
• Program is a set (collection) of instruction to do a meaningful
task.

• A sequence of instructions that are interpreted and executed by a

computer. It can be made of a single or hundred of instructions.

• For example: In order to teach the computer on how to calculate

average of three numbers? We need to give multiple instructions
to the computer to do the task.
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 Program
Instruction 1: Get first number from the user and store it in A variable
Instruction 2: Get second number from the user and store it in B variable
Instruction 3: Get third number from the user and store it in C variable
Instruction 4: Add A, B, C and store the result in SUM variable
Instruction 5: Divide SUM by 3 and store result in AVG variable
Instruction 6: Display AVG variable

• Instructions 1-6 are used to solve a single task. This collection of instruction
is known as a program.

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Programming Language

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 Programming Language

• A programming language is an artificial language designed to

communicate instructions to a computer.

• A programming language is a notation for writing programs.

• A vocabulary and set of grammatical rules for instructing a

computer to
perform specific tasks.

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 Programming Language
• Each language has a unique set of keywords (special words that it
understands) and a special syntax (format) for organizing program
instructions.
• There are many programming languages. For example:

• GW Basic • JAVA • Python

• C • Pascal • C#
• C++ • COBOL

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 Types of Programming Languages
• There are three types of programming languages:

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 Low-Level
Languages

Machine (Computer) Human (Programmer)

LANGUAGE

A language which is closer to machine (computer)

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 Low-Level
Languages

• A low level language is one which is closer to the machine (computer).

• It is easier for machines to understand and difficult for humans to

understand.

• It is faster in execution as compared to high and middle level

languages.

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 Low-Level
Languages
• Two of the types of low level languages are:

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 Machine Language
• It is one of the low level language.

• It is the language of 0s and 1s.

• Machine languages are the only languages directly understood by the

computers.

• While easily understood by computers, machine languages are almost

impossible for humans to use because they consist entirely of numbers (0s
and 1s).

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 Machine Language

• It is the native language of the machines (computers).

• Here all the instructions are written as code of binary sequence. For
example:
• In order to do addition, the code is: 10010001
• In order to decrement a number by one, the code is: 11011011
• In order to move data from one place to another, the code is:
10000111

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 Machine Language

• There are hundreds of instructions and each instruction has a binary code.

• Is it possible to remember all the codes of hundreds of instruction?

• Obviously not! Hence machine language almost impossible to understand.

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 Machine Language
• Machine language program example:
10010010
11001010
01001010
11110101
00000101
00101000
11101010
10101010

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 Assembly Language
• Assembly language is same as machine language but uses English like words
to represent individual operations.

• For example: Instead of binary codes it uses : ADD, MOV, SUB, INC

• Assembly language is also a low-level language.

• It is easier than the machine language but still it is very difficult to control a
larger program using assembly.

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 Assembly Language

• As assembly language contains English like words, which will not be

understood by the computer (because it only understands 0s and 1s)

• A translator first converts the assembly language program into machine

language program.

• Translator used with assembly language is called Assembler.

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 Assembly Language
• Assembly language program example:

MVI A, 05h
MVI B, 9Ah
ADD B
INC

A
STA

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 High-Level
Languages

Machine (Computer) Human (Programmer)

LANGUAGE

A language which is closer to human (programmer)

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 High-Level
Languages

• A high level language is one which is closer to the human (programmer).

• It is easier for humans to understand and difficult for machines to

understand.

• It is slower in execution as compared to low level languages.

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 High-Level
Languages

• Like assembly language, it also uses English like words for the operations.

• For example: for, if, else, break, continue, while, include,

using, import

• It is more easier than assembly language.

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 High-Level
Languages
• Some of the high level programming languages are:

• GW Basic • COBOL • J#
• C++ • Python • Ruby
• JAVA • C# • PHP
• Pascal • Visual Basic

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 High-Level
Languages
• High level language program example:
int main()
{
int a = 5;
int b =
6;
if(a > b)
cout<<“First number is greater.”;
else
cout<<“Second number is greater.”;
}

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 Middle-Level Languages

Machine (Computer) Human (Programmer)

LANGUAGE

A language which is some how closer to machine as well as

human
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 Middle-Level Languages

• A middle level language is one which is closer to machine (computer) as well

as to human (programmer).

• A language that has the features of both low level and high level languages.

• More formally, a high level language that allows you to write low level
programs in it is called as middle level language.

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 Middle-Level Languages
• Some of the middle level programming languages are:

• C
• IBM PL/S (Programming Language/Systems)
• BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language)
• BLISS (Bill's Language for Implementing System Software)

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 Source Code and Object
Code
Source Code Object Code

• The set of instructions written in • The set of instructions written in

any language other than machine language is called as object
machine language is called as code. It is also known as machine
source code. code.

• It is not directly understood by • It is the only code which is directly

the machine (computer). understood by the machine
(computer).

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 Source Code and Object
Code
Source Code Object Code

• It is in the form of text. • It is in the form of binary numbers.

• It is human readable. • It is machine (computer) readable.

• It is generated by human • It is generated by the language

(programmer). translator.

• It is input to the • It is the output of the language

language translator. translator.

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Language Translators

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 Language Translators
• Language translator is a program that converts the source code in to the
object code.

CONVERT
Source Code Translator Object Code

Language Translator

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 Why Language Translators?
• Computer only understands object code (machine code).

• It does not understand any source code.

• There must be a program that converts source code in to the object code so
that the computer can understand it.

• The language translator is one which does this job.

• The programmer writes the source code and then translator converts it in
machine readable format (object code).
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 Types of Language Translators
• There are three types of language translator:

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 Assembler
• Assembler is the language translator that converts assembly language code
in to the object code (machine code).

CONVERT
Assembly
Assembler Object Code
Source
Code

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 Compiler
• Compiler is the language translator that converts high level language code in
to the object code (machine code).

• It converts the whole code at a time.

CONVERT
High-Level
Compiler Object Code
Source
Code

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 Compiler

Program Read whole Program

Line 1 : Instruction 1 Line 1 : Instruction 1

Line 2 : Instruction 2 Line 2 : Instruction 2 Convert whole
Line 3 : Instruction 3 Line 3 : Instruction 3 program in to object Execute
Line 4 : Instruction 4 Line 4 : Instruction 4 code
Line 5 : Instruction 5 Line 5 : Instruction 5

1 2 3 4

Ali Asghar Manjotho, Lecturer CSE-MUET 41

 Interpreter
• Interpreter is the language translator that converts high level language code
in to the object code (machine code).

• It converts the code line by line.

CONVERT
High-Level
Interpreter Object Code
Source
Code

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 Interpreter

Program

Line 1 : Instruction 1 Read Line 1 Convert in to object code Execute 2

Line 2 : Instruction 2 Read Line 2 Convert in to object code
Execute 3
Line 3 : Instruction 3 Read Line 3 Convert in to object code Execute 4
Line 4 : Instruction 4 Read Line 4 Convert in to object code Execute 5
Line 5 : Instruction 5 Read Line 5 Convert in to object code 6

Execute
1

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 Difference between Compiler and Interpreter

• Compiler • Interpreter

• It converts whole code at a time. • It converts the code line by line.

• It is faster. • It is slower.

• Requires more memory. • Requires less memory.

• Errors are displayed after entire • Errors are displayed for every instruction
program is checked. • interpreted (if any).

• Example: C, C++, JAVA. • Example: GW BASIC, Ruby, Python

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Bug

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 Bu
g
• An error or defect occurred inside a computer program or hardware that
causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in
unintended ways is called as a bug.
• Most of the bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by programmer in
source code.
• The term bug was used by Grace Hopper in 1946.
• Hopper used to work on Mark II computer, there some error occurred in the
system. The cause of the error was a moth (bug) trapped in a relay creating
short circuit.
• That caused the term bug to be coined.

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Debugging

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 Debugging

• It is the process of finding and fixing the bugs (errors) in the program.

• It is the process of removing errors.

• The programmer manually does this by examining the source code.

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Types of errors

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Types of errors

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