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A brief introduction to language levels
The productivity of a language is highly correlated with its level.
As levels increase, the number of statements required to accomplish a
particular task generally decreases.
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The first generation was machine code, a binary, octal (base 8), or
hexadecimal (base 16) representation of machine words
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The second generation was assembly language, simple mnemonics for
machine code
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Third generation includes most compiled languages, including older
ones such as Pascal, Fortran, C, BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic
Instruction Code), and COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), but
also includes newer derivatives like C++ and Java
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Fourth generation languages are the proprietary
languages used to develop database applications
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Scripting languages, like MetaTalk, Perl, ksh, Tcl, and Python, are
most similar to 4GLs, but generally are even higher level and were
designed to be general purpose tools rather than specifically for
dealing with databases
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