Programming Languages: Pascal, Basic, Fortran, and Cobol
Pascal. It was designed by Professor Niklaus Wirth at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1970. He named it after the seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal. The language was first introduced by its designer and later became available for all popular microcomputers.
The main reason that prompted Niklaus Wirth to develop Pascal was to provide a language for educational programming as a systematic discipline, so that the principles of discipline were clearly reflected by the language. It builds on an earlier programming language, ALGOL 60, retaining all the desirable characteristics of this language, with applications and corrections. The fact that Pascal was widely adopted not only for teaching programming but also for the development of microprocessor systems and microcomputer users is indicative of its success and the success of its designer in achieving its main purpose.
Pascal provides a wide range of programming structures and allows you to define data types as needed. Therefore, the programmer is provided with all the necessary features to give their programs a logical structure and the ability to design their own data structures if those supplied by Pascal do not meet their needs. Thus, there is no need to resort to artificial or idiosyncratic methods to design programs and manage data.
Basic. BASIC provides very few structures to facilitate program construction. This is the reason why BASIC is so easy to learn (other languages tend to provide more powerful codes). Likewise, a characteristic determinant of BASIC programs is that they must be built using the same number of short blocks.
BASIC has a variety of functions, including numeric functions broadly comparable to those of a scientific calculator, and functions for character handling. BASIC provides a limited repertoire of programming structures, although, like all programming languages, it offers users the possibility to build others. It is feasible to describe any calculation in BASIC, but for writing programs of any size, there are definitely a series of restrictions because of the lack of good programming structures.
Fortran was the first high-level language. It was developed by IBM, and its first version was released in 1957. Its name comes from the contraction of ‘Formula Translation’ and gives a good indication of the language. As recorded in the first FORTRAN manual, it provides a language capable of expressing any problem in terms of a numerical calculation, in particular those that involve many forms and many variables. It was designed for use in scientific and technical applications.
It is characterized by its strength in mathematical calculations but is limited with regard to non-numeric data processing. The original version of FORTRAN was developed to run on a machine (the IBM 704) and was conceived in light of the characteristics of that machine. The importance of FORTRAN as the first high-level language was facilitated by the fact that it offered programmers an alternative to assembly code, providing some respite from the tyranny and detail imposed by the latter.
Cobol. Excels in the management of alphanumeric data and files, so you can perform tasks such as reading and updating records and automatic form completion. Among its drawbacks are its rigid rules of writing format, the need to write all elements in fine detail, the excessive length of its sentences, and the lack of mathematical functions.