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System Software

Notes 7. Programs written in high level languages are easier to debug as translators display all the
errors with proper error messages at the time of translation.
8. Programs written in high level languages are largely machine independent. Therefore,
programs developed on one computer can be run on another with little or no modifications.

10.2.2 Popular High Level Programming Languages

ADA

ADA was named after Lady Augusta Ada Byron (the first computer programmer). It was designed
by the US Defence Department for its real time applications. It is suitable for parallel processing.

APL

Developed by Dr Kenneth Aversion at IBM, APL is a convenient, interactive programming
language suitable for expressing complex mathematical expressions in compact formats.
It requires special terminals for use.

BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)

BASIC was developed by John Kemeny & Thomas Karthy at Dartmouth College. It is a widely
known and accepted programming language. It is easy to use and is almost coded in real-time
conversational mode. This language provides good error diagnostics but has no self-structuring
or self-documentation.

Pascal

Developed in 1968, Pascal was named after a French inventor Blaise Pascal and was developed
by a SWISS programmer NiKolus Wirth. Pascal was the first structured programming language
and it is used for both scientific and business data processing applications.

FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation)

 Developed by IBM in 1957, it is one of the oldest and most widely used high level languages.
It is widely used by scientists and engineers as this language has huge libraries of
engineering and scientific programs.
 This language is suitable for expressing formulae, writing equations, and performing
iterative calculations.
Various versions of FORTRAN are:
FORTRAN I (1957)
FORTRAN II (1958)
FORTRAN IV (1962)

FORTRAN 77 (1978)

COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language)

COBOL is a structured and self documented language. It was developed by a committee of
business, industry, government, and academic representatives called CODASYL (COnference

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