PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

Programming Language



Programming Language

Task 1)

The definition of the term programming language can vary with the context: these languages are both tools for directing the operation of a computer and tools for organizing and expressing solutions to problems. In order to lead up to the one proposed by this writer, we must consider various levels of languages used for dealing with the computer (Schwartz, 2001, 225).

A )

A procedure-oriented language is one in which the user specifies a set of executable operations that are to be performed in sequence. These operations can be organized into procedures or subprograms (q.v.), and a program is constructed as a sequence of procedure calls and other statements. The key property here is that these constructs are definitely executable operations, and the sequencing is already specified by the user. Fortran, Cobol, and Ada are examples.

B )

Object-oriented languages are procedural languages that allow data to be packaged with the procedures that operate on them and to hide implementation details of the data and of the operations. Such data abstraction is an important software engineering tool for the construction of large programs.

C )

It is actually a relative term, characterizing the degree to which a user can specify what is to be done rather than how to do it. The closer the user can come to stating a problem without specifying the sequential steps for solving it, the more nonprocedural is the language. Furthermore, there can be an ordered sequence of steps, each of which is “somewhat nonprocedural,” or a set of executable operations whose sequence is not specified by the user. Both cases contribute to more “nonproceduralness.” Thus, in languages like Fortran, the statement:

It is nonprocedural because the order in which the operations are executed is not completely specified, although it may be one step in a procedural sequence of statements (Welling, 2007, 33).

HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML)

is a mark-up language developed for multimedia documents, such as World Wide Web pages.

Tags in HTML are labels for characterising portions of text. A browser should use the tags to control the display of the text. The tags themselves are never actually displayed. Each tag consists of a name sometimes followed by an optional list of attributes. Tags generally occur in pairs, bracketing elements of the text. Such tags are an instruction about how the text between the tags should be treated. For example glossary indicates that the single word 'glossary' should be emphasised, and this generally results in the browser displaying it in italic text.

As with all mark-up languages, an HTML document is just text and can be transmitted rapidly. Portability is further enhanced by the required behaviour of a browser on encountering an unknown tag, which is simply to ignore it. It is thus possible for a web page to capitalise on features present in later browsers, while still displaying satisfactorily in earlier versions.

Task 2)

Because this is not easily readable by the human eye, assembly languages such as C were developed to make programming an easier ...