Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Programming languages - How they evolved and their differences Introduction At the beginning of the computer era, programming a computer consisted of feeding 1’s and 0’s into the machine and hoping to get the correct output on the other end. But as they have evolved, programming languages have gotten more and more English-like and ever more abstract. The goal has always been to make the concept of controlling a machine via code written by people less difficult. The only way to do this is to get further away from machine level operations. This paper deals with the changes and evolution of these languages. Many computer users do not understand or appreciate the programs that they use. Starting with the history of programming languages, this paper will help to inform these people. With the help of resources like Dr. Dobb’s journal and other magazines, the average user will learn the differences in the languages, how the languages are interpreted and some of the newest advancements in programming languages. History Programming languages have had many major advancements over the last 57 years. Figure 1 shows a timeline starting with Von Neumann’s conditional control transfer and ending with the creation of Jav