Why do we need computer languages?

Computer Language (Computer Language) refers to the language used for communication between humans and computers. Computer language is a medium for transmitting information between humans and computers. The biggest feature of a computer system is that instructions are conveyed to the machine through a language. In order for an electronic computer to perform various tasks, it is necessary to have a set of numbers, characters, and grammar plans for writing computer programs. These characters and grammar rules form various computer instructions (or various statements). These are the languages ​​that the computer can accept.

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I can answer your question from a historical perspective. The early days of computer language:

In the 1940s, when computers were just coming out, programs The operator must manually control the computer. Computers at that time were very expensive, and the only person who thought of using programming languages ​​to solve problems was the German engineer Konradzuse. Soon after, the price of computers dropped dramatically, and computer programs became increasingly complex. In other words, development time is already far more valuable than running time. As a result, new integrated, visual development environments are becoming more and more popular. They take away time, money (and brain cells). With just a few keystrokes, an entire piece of code is ready to use. This also benefits from a reusable program code library. With the birth of structured high-level languages ​​such as C, Pascal, Fortran, etc., programmers can leave the machine level and express their intentions at a more abstract level. The three important control structures and some basic data types born from this can very well start to allow programmers to think and describe problems in a way that is close to the essence of the problem. As the scale of programs continued to expand, a software crisis occurred in the late 1960s. Even the programming models at that time could not overcome errors. As the code expanded, they expanded exponentially, to the point of being uncontrollable. At this time, A new way of thinking about programming and programming model emerged - object-oriented programming, and a number of programming languages ​​​​that support this technology were born, such as eiffel, c, java, these languages ​​​​are all named after Look at the problem from a new perspective, that is, the problem is composed of objects with different attributes and the message passing between objects. Object-oriented languages ​​must therefore support new programming techniques, such as data hiding, data abstraction, user-defined types, inheritance, polymorphism, etc.

Current situation

Today's common programming languages ​​come in two forms: assembly language and high-level language.

Computer Language

Assembly language and machine language are essentially the same. They both directly operate on the hardware. However, the instructions use English abbreviated identifiers, which are easy to identify and remember. The executable file generated by the assembly of the source program is not only relatively small, but also executes very quickly.

High-level languages ​​are the choice of most programmers. Compared with assembly language, it not only synthesizes many related machine instructions into a single instruction, but also removes details related to specific operations but irrelevant to completing the work, such as the use of stacks, registers, etc., thus greatly simplifying the instructions in the program . At the same time, because many details are omitted, programmers do not need to have much professional knowledge.

High-level language is mainly compared to low-level language. It does not refer to a specific language, but includes many programming languages, such as popular vb, vc, foxpro, delphi, etc. These The syntax and command format of the languages ​​are different.

Programs written in high-level languages ​​cannot be directly recognized by computers and must be converted before they can be executed. They can be divided into two categories according to the conversion method: interpreted and compiled. [1]

Trend

Object-oriented programming and data abstraction play an important role in modern programming thinking. In the future, the development of language will no longer be a simple language standard, but will It will be completely object-oriented, easier to express the real world, and easier to write for people. Its use of

computer language

will no longer be just a professional programmer, people can use it to customize real life An easy way to complete programming in a workflow.

Simplicity: Provides the most basic methods to complete specified tasks. As long as you understand some basic concepts, you can use it to write applications suitable for various situations.

Object-oriented: Provides simple class mechanism and dynamic interface model. The object encapsulates state variables and corresponding methods, achieving modularization and information hiding; it provides a prototype of a class of objects, and through the inheritance mechanism, subclasses can use the methods provided by the parent class, realizing code reuse.

Security: Used in network and distributed environments with security mechanisms guaranteed.

Platform independence: The platform-independent feature allows the program to be easily transplanted to different machines and platforms on the network.

Father of Computer Language

"Father of Computer Language" Nygaard helped lay the foundation for the Internet and made great contributions to the computer industry.

Nygaed is a professor at the University of Oslo. He is internationally renowned for developing the Simula programming language and laying the foundation for MS-DOS and the Internet. Christian Nygaard was born in Oslo in 1926. He graduated from the University of Oslo in 1956 with a master's degree in mathematics. Since then, he has devoted himself to computer computing and programming research.

From 1961 to 1967, Nygaard worked at the Norwegian Computer Center and participated in the development of object-oriented programming languages. Because of his outstanding performance, in 2001, Nygaard and his colleague Orr Yoan Dahl won the 2001a. m. Turing Machine Award and many other awards. The Computing Machinery Association, which awarded Nygaard the award at the time, believed that their work had cleared the way for the widespread application of programming languages ​​​​such as Java and C in personal computers and home entertainment devices. "Their work has brought about fundamental changes in the design and programming of software systems." , Recyclable, reliable, and upgradable software has become available."

Nygaard is known as the "Father of Computer Languages" because of his outstanding contributions. His contribution to the development of computer languages The grasp and understanding of trends, as well as the spirit of dedicating ourselves to the development of computer languages, will inspire us to move towards a brilliant future for computer languages.

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