Syntax, grammar, and symbols or words by means of which instructions are given
to a Computer. Because computers work with binary numbers (see Numeration), the most primitive means of instructing the computer is through Machine language. This is usually an octal, decimal, or hexadecimal representation of
the binary codes for operations such as add, subtract, and compare. Because it is difficult to write programs in machine language without error,
many languages have been designed to make programming easier and faster. The
earliest of these, called symbolic languages or assembly languages, are written
using simple mnemonics such as A for add or M for multiply, which are then translated into a machine language by a Computer Program called an assembler. An extension of such a language is the macro
instruction, a mnemonic such as READ for which the assembler substitutes a series of simpler mnemonics to save the
programmer Time. The next advance was the algorithmic, or procedural, language, which is
designed for solving a particular type of problem and, unlike machine or symbolic
languages, varies very little between computers. All algorithmic and procedural
languages must be translated into machine code by a computer program called a
compiler or interpreter. The first of these languages was FORTRAN (FORmula
TRANslation), which was developed by John Backus about 1956 and is best used for
scientific calculation. The first commercial language. COBOL (COmmon Business
Oriented Language), was developed about 1959 under the leadership of Grace Hopper.
ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language) was developed in Europe about 1958 and is used
primarily in mathematics and science, as is APL (A Programming Language),
published by Kenneth Iverson in 1962. PL/1 (Programming Language 1), developed in the
late 1960s, and ADA (named after Ada Augusta, countess of Lovelace, the
biographer of Babbage, Charles), developed under the direction of the U.S. Department of Defense in 1981,
are designed for both business and scientific use. For Personal Computer (PC) the most popular languages are BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic
Instruction Code), developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College in
1967 and similar to FORTRAN, and Pascal (named after Blaise PASCAL, a French
mathematician who built the first successful mechanical calculator), which was
designed as a teaching language by Niklaus Wirth in Switzerland. In 1982, Wirth
unveiled Modula 2, a Pascal-like language intended for use in both commercial and
mathematical applications. Many other languages have been designed to meet
specialized needs. For example, GPSS (General Purpose System Simulator) is used for
simulation and modeling of physical and environmental events, and SNOBOL
(String-Oriented Symbolic Language) and LISP (LISt Processing) are designed for
pattern matching and list processing.