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Cyhist Apr 15 1997 B
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Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 09:35:49 -0400
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Eric Bridger <eric@MAINE.COM>
Subject: CM> Re: Origins: fourth generation programming languages?
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Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
At 02:57 PM 4/14/97 -0500, David S. Bennahum wrote:
>What is the definition of a "fourth generation" programming language? What are the characteristics of the first three generation languages? Why is this terminology useful? What are its origins?
Let me preface this by saying this is mostly speculation. I don't have a definitive answer. A couple of years ago I spent 10 months working with Informix's 4GL product. (I wasn't a big fan of it). I thought the progression went something like this: 1st generation: machine code, binary ones and zeros.
(not sure why that even qualifies as a "language"?) but I once had
a CS professor of IBM 370 Assembler of whom it was said he could read the instructions from a hex dump. 2nd generation: Assembly language, turned by the assembler into machine code. 3rd generation: Fortran, C, etc, turned by the compiler into assembler, then
into machine code.
4th generation: Gives you the proceedural and logical control of a 3rd gen.
plus more stuff, e.g. User Interace widgets, relational database access, form handling, etc.
The Informix 4GL gave you most of C's loops, controls, etc. plus made it quite easy to access, retrieve and update data stored in SQL relational database as well as form creation and crude terminal based display. =-=-
Eric Bridger
http://w3.maine.com/eric
http://www.necx.com/
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Eric Bridger <eric@MAINE.COM>
Subject: CM> Re: Origins: fourth generation programming languages?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
At 02:57 PM 4/14/97 -0500, David S. Bennahum wrote:
>What is the definition of a "fourth generation" programming language? What are the characteristics of the first three generation languages? Why is this terminology useful? What are its origins?
Let me preface this by saying this is mostly speculation. I don't have a definitive answer. A couple of years ago I spent 10 months working with Informix's 4GL product. (I wasn't a big fan of it). I thought the progression went something like this: 1st generation: machine code, binary ones and zeros.
(not sure why that even qualifies as a "language"?) but I once had
a CS professor of IBM 370 Assembler of whom it was said he could read the instructions from a hex dump. 2nd generation: Assembly language, turned by the assembler into machine code. 3rd generation: Fortran, C, etc, turned by the compiler into assembler, then
into machine code.
4th generation: Gives you the proceedural and logical control of a 3rd gen.
plus more stuff, e.g. User Interace widgets, relational database access, form handling, etc.
The Informix 4GL gave you most of C's loops, controls, etc. plus made it quite easy to access, retrieve and update data stored in SQL relational database as well as form creation and crude terminal based display. =-=-
Eric Bridger
http://w3.maine.com/eric
http://www.necx.com/
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