Computer Languages

Computer Languages

Differences in computer languages is a topic that many people are not

familiar with. I was one of those kinds of people before I started researching

on this topic. There many different computer languages and each one of them are

similar in some ways, but are also different in other ways, such as: program

syntax, the format of the language, and the limitations of the language.

Most computer programmers start programming in languages such as turbo

pascal or one of the various types of basic. Turbo pascal, Basic, and Fortran

are some of the oldest computer languages. Many of today's modern languages

have been a result of one of these three languages, but are greatly improved.

Both turbo pascal and basic are languages that are easy to understand and the

syntax is very easy and straightforward. In Basic when printing to the screen

you simply type the word 'print', in turbo pascal you would type 'writeln'.

These are very simple commands that the computer executes. To execute a line of

code in a language such as C, or C++, you would have to type in much more

sophisticated lines of code that are much more confusing than the previous two.

The format and layout of the various languages are very diverse between

some, and between others are somewhat similar. When programming in Basic the

user has to type in line numbers before each new line of code. In an updated

version of Basic called QBasic, numbers are optional. Turbo pascal does not

allow the user to input numbers, it has preset commands that seperate each part

of the program. This is similar to QBasic, but is much more sophisticated.

Instead of using the command gosub in Basic, the user would make a procedure

call.

Another new language is C. C is a spinoff of turbo pascal but is

capable of doing more things than turbo. The format and layout are similar, but

the syntax is much more complex than turbo is. When C first came out, there

were many major flaws in the language so a new version had to be put out, C++.

The main addition from C to C++ is the concept of classes and templates. Many

other small flaws were fixed when this new version of C came out also.

Many of the languages have different limitations on the tasks that they