Budd wrote:
>1. Assembly was the only way to program originally.
>Then, FORTRAN and COBOL were first generation languages.
>Later, ADA and C (and many others) were second generation.
>Now, JAVA and others (C++, SmalllTalk etc. are third
> generation languages.
Originally you would change the bits by hand (switches, punch cards). When
ASM came it was a huge improvment (it's easier to remember "MOV ax,0" than
"1000 1110 1111 0001" (or something like that).
C is often considered a generation 1.5 language (making it closer to ASM -
but not the same thing as ASM). That some of the code in Arachne seems like
it's ported from ASM to C is another thing entirely ;-)
And to finish it all off, an example of a generation 4 language is SQL.
