The syllbus talks about Operating Systems and Utilities in this section. Please refer to the Elements of a Computer System pages for more information.

Generations of programming languages

These four slideshows give a brief overview of the first, second, third and fourth generations of programming languages. Sometimes the speaker notes are helpful when interpreting slides.

The fifth presentation on this page discusses techniques for converting program code to machine code, depending on the language

Second Generation languages

Also called 2GLs began using mnemonics to create code. These languages needed translation - a step that converted human recognisable code to machine code.

Third Generation Languages

Also called 3GLs, most of our well-used codging languages are 3GL, like C, Python, VB, Java and so on. These languages are either compiled or interpreted, depending on the language.

Fourth Generation Languages

4GLs use closer to natural hman language and are seen commonly in SQL and our digital assistants.

Translation, Compilation and Interpretation

All these programming languages need, eventually, to get down to machine code so a CPU can execute it. Hence the need for translation, compilaion or interpretation to convert programming code into machine code for executing.