Top 10 Most Popular Programming Languages

 

Top 10 Most Popular Programming Languages

Today, a large number of high-level programming languages are available for developing different pes of software applications. However, only few of these programming languages are popular among programmers. The following are some of the popular high-level programming languages used around the world:
1. FORTRAN
2.LISP
3. COBOL
4.BASIC
5.PASCAL
6.C
7. C++
8.Java
9.Python
10.C#

FORTRAN
FORTRAN is the most dominant high-level programming language employed in the science and engineering domain. As mentioned earlier, FORTRAN was initially developed by a team led by John Backus at IBM in the 1950 s. Since then several new versions of FORTRAN have evolved. They nclude FORTRAN II, FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN 77 and FORTRAN 90. FORTRAN 90, which is approved by the International Organisation for Standardisation, is more portable. reliable and efficient as compared to ts earlier versions. The following are some of the important applications areas where FORTRAN can be Employed:

★Finding solutions to partial differential equations
★Predicting weather
★Solving problems related to fluid mechanics ★Solving problems related to physics and chemistry

Some of the most significant characteristics of FORTRAN are enumerated as under:
★It is easier to learn as compared to the other scientific high-level languages.

★It has a powerful built-in library containing some useful functions, which are helpful in performing complex mathematical computations.

★It enables the programmers to create well-structured and well-documented programs. • The internal computations in this language are performed rapidly and efficiently.

★The programs written in this language can be easily understood by other programmers, who have not actually developed the programs.

LISP
LISP (List Processing) was developed by John McCarthy in the year 1958 as a functional program language for handling data structures known as lists. LISP is now extensively used for research in the of artificial intelligence (AI). Some of the versions of LISP are Standared LISP, MACLISP, Inter LISP. LISP and Common LISP.

Some good features of LISP are:

Recursion, that is a programming calling itself, is possible.

★Easy to write and use.
★Recursion, that is a programming calling itself, is possible.
★Supports grabage collection.

★Supports interactive computing.
★ Most suitable for AI applications.

Some negative aspects of LISP are:

★Poor reliability.
★Poor readability of programs.
★Not a general-purpose language.

COBOL
COBOL is a high-level programming language developed in the year 1959 by Conference on DA SYstems Languages (CODASYL) committee. This language was specially designed and developed for t business domain. Apart from the business domain, COBOL can also be used to develop the programs the various other applications. However, this language cannot be employed for developing various syst software such as operating systems, device drivers etc. COBOL has gone through a number of improveme phases since its inception and, as a result, several new versions of COBOL have evolved.
phases since its inception and, as a result, several new versions of COBOL have evolved. The most significant versions of COBOL, which are standardised by American National Standards Institute (ANSI), are COBOL-68, COBOL-74 and COBOL-85.

Some of the most significant characteristics of COBOL are enumerated as follows:
★The applications developed in this language are simple, portable and easily maintainable.

★It has several built-in functions to automate the various tasks in business domain. It can handle and process a large amount of data at a time and in a very efficient manner.

★As compared to the other business-oriented high-level programming languages, the applications can be developed rapidly.

★It does not implement the concept of pointers, user-defined data types, and user-defined functions and hence is simple to use.

BASIC
BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurty at Dartmaith Collge, USA in the year 1964. The language was extensively used for microcomputers and home computers during 1970s and 1980s. BASIC was standardized by ANSI in 1978 and became popular among business and scientific users alike. BASIC continues to be widely used because it can be learned quickly.

During the last four decades, different versions of BASIC have appeared. These include Altair BASIC, MBASIC. GWBASIC. Quick BASIC, Turbo BASIC and Visual BASIC. Microsoft's Visual BASIC adds object-oriented features and a graphical user interface to the standard BASIC.
Main features of BASIC are:
★It is the first interpreted language.
★It is a general-purpose language.
★ It is easy to learn as it uses common English words.

PASCAL
PASCAL is one of the oldest high-level programming languages developed by Niklaus Wirth in the year 1970. It was the most efficient and productive language of its time. The programming paradigm employed by PASCAL is procedural programming. A number of different versions of PASCAL have evolved since 1970 that help in developing the programs for various applications such as research projects, computer games and embedded systems. Some of the versions of PASCAL include USCD PASCAL, Turbo PASCAL, Vector PASCAL and Morfik PASCAL. This programming language was also used for the development of various operating systems such as Apple Lisa and Mac.
Some of the most significant characteristics of PASCAL are enumerated as under:
★It is simple and easy to learn as compared to the other high-level programming languages of its time.
★It enables the programmers to develop well-structured and modular programs that are easy to maintain and modify.

★The data in this language is stored and processed efficiently with the help of strong data structures.
★It enables the programmer to create the data types according to their requirements that are also referred as user-defined data types.
★The PASCAL compiler has strong type checking capability that prevents the occurrence of data type mismatch errors in a program.

C
C is a general-purpose high-level programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie and Brain Kernighan at Bell Telephone Laboratories, the USA in the year 1972. C is a well-known high-level programming language that is used for developing the application as well as system programs. It is also block-structured and procedural, which means that the code developed in C can be easily understood and maintained. C is the most favourite language of system programmers because of its several key characterises, that are hardly found in other high-level programming languages. The first major system program developed in C was the UNIX operating system. C is also regarded as a middle-level language because it contains the low-level as well as the high-level language features.
Some of the most significant characteristics of C are:
★C is machine and operating system independent language. Therefore, the programs developed in C are highly portable as compared to the programs developed in the other high-level programming languages.

★It is a highly efficient programming language because the programs developed in this language are executed very rapidly by the CPU of the computer system. Also, the memory requirement for the storage and the processing of C programs is comparatively less. Therefore, C is considered to be equivalent to assembly language in terms of efficiency.

★It can be used to develop a variety of applications; hence, it is considered to be quite flexible.

★It allows the programmer to define and use their own data types. C allows the use of pointers that allows the programmers to work with the memory of the computer system in an efficient manner.

C++
C++ is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs in the year 1979. Initially. Bjarne Stroustrup named his new language as C with classes because this new language was the extended version of the existing programming language. C. Later, this new language was renamed as C++. It is also regarded as the superset of the C language because it retains many of its salient features. In addition to having the significant features of C, C++ was also expanded to include several object-oriented programming features, such as classes, virtual functions, operator overloading. inheritance and templates.
Some of the most significant characteristics of C++ are as follows:
★It uses the concept of objects and classes for developing programs.

★The code developed in this language can be reused in a very efficient and productive manner. Like C, C++ is also a machine and operating system independent language. Therefore, the programs developed in this language are highly portable.

★It is a highly efficient language in terms of the CPU cycles and memory required for executing different programs.

★The number of instructions required to accomplish a particular task in C++ is relatively lesser as compared to some of the other high-level programming languages.

★It follows the modular approach of developing the programs for the different types of applications. Therefore, the programs developed in C++ can be understood and maintained easily.

★ C++ is highly compatible with its ancestor language, i.e., C because a program developed in C can be executed under the C++ compiler with almost no change in the code.

JAVA
JAVA is an object-oriented programming language introduced by Sun Microsystems in the year 1995. It was originally developed in the year 1991 by James Gosling and his team. The syntax and the semantics of JAVA are somewhat similar to C++. However, it is regarded as more powerful than C++ and the other high-level programming languages. In the current scenario, JAVA is the most dominant object-oriented programming language for developing web-based applications. Apart from the web-based applications, JAVA can also be employed to develop other types of applications, such as desktop applications and embedded systems applications.

JAVA is a highly platform independent language because it uses the concept of just-in-time compilation. In this type of compilation, the JAVA programs are not directly compiled into the native machine code. Instead, an intermediate machine code called bytecode is generated by the JAVA compiler that can be interpreted on any platform with the help of a program known as JAVA interpreter. Some of the most significant characteristics of JAVA are enumerated as under:

★It is a highly object-oriented and platform independent language.

★The programs written in this language are compiled and interpreted in two different phases.

★The programs written in this language are more robust and reliable.nl ddrances of glazinga

★It is more secure as compared to the other high-level programming languages because it does no allow the programmer to access the memory directly.

★It assists the programmers in managing the memory automatically with a feature called garbag collection.io TOM edl 200

★It also implements the concept of dynamic binding and threading in a better and efficient manner a compared to other object-oriented languages.

Python
Python is a high-level and object-oriented programming language developed by Guido Van Rossum in the ear 1991. It is a general-purpose programming language that can be used to develop software for a variety if applications. Python is also regarded as the successor language of ABC programming language. ABC was a general-purpose programming language developed by a team of three scientists, leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens, and Steven Pemberton. Several versions of Python have been evolved since 1991. Some of the versions of Python are Python 0.9, Python 1.0. Python 1.2, Python 1.4, Python 1.6 and Python 2.0.

Python has a strong built-in library for performing various types of computations. This built-in library also makes Python simple and easy to learn. Python is an interpreted language and its interpreter as well as other standard libraries are freely available on the Internet. The programs developed in this language can be run on different platforms and under different operating systems. Hence, Python is regarded as platform independent language, wis blog ism bas

Some of the salient features of Python are:
★It is an interpreted and object-oriented programming language. bokong 20
★ It implements the concept of exception handling and dynamic binding better than the other languages of its time.

★The syntax and the semantics of this language are quite clear and concise.

★It is a platform independent language.

C#
C#, pronounced as "C-sharp" is a new object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft late in the 1990s. It combines the power of C++ with the programming case of Visual BASIC. C# is directly
descended from C++ and contains features similar to those of JAVA. C# was specially designed to work with Microsoft's .NET platform launched in 2000. This platform offers a new software-development model that allows applications developed in different languages to communicate with each other. C# includes several modern programming features that include:

★ concise, lean and modern language
★object-oriented visual programming
★component-oriented language
★multimedia (audio, animation and video) support
★very good exception handling
★suitable for Web-based applications
★language interoperability
★ more type safe than C++.
As C# has been built upon widely used languages such as C and C++, it is easy to learn. Using the THE Integrated Development Environment (IDE), it is very easy and much faster to develop and test C# programs.

FAQS

What is an example of high-level?
Ans:C, C++, Python, Java, Cobol etc are a few examples of high-level languages.

What type of language is Python?
Ans:Python is a high-level and object-oriented programming language developed by Guido Van Rossum in the ear 1991. It is a general-purpose programming language that can be used to develop software for a variety if applications.