Lesson Eight TEXT What is High-Level Language When the very first compu
ters were constructed the only way to program them was to write in mach
ine code. This was a specialized task and it took a very long time to p
roduce a good working program. It also needed an intimate knowledge of 
the computer itself. Soon, however, people other than the computer engi
neers wanted to use the computer and to computer engineers themselves w
anted an easier nethod of programming. Consequently, system were develo
ped that allowed symbolic representation of instructions, addresses and
 lables. Such systems were known as symbolic or assembly-level language
s. They made program writing easier but needed a complex program (calle
d an assembler) to convert them. This led on to machine-independent hig
h-level languages which had to be translated or compied into machine co
de. These translators or compilers were very complex programs. Thus a n
ew branch of computing was born, that of compiler writing, which in tru
n generated further research into the programming languages themseleves
. The application to which a computer is put does not in general bear a
ny relationship to the computer itself. Hence, during the 1950s the fir
st attempts were made to producte language that bore no relationship to
 the computer architecture but concentrated solely on the application. 
There were two principal languages, FORTRAN and ALGOL. FORTRAN (Formula
 Translation) was developed by IBM in the USA and was running on its 79
40 machines by 1958. It was designed for the compuation of scientific f
ormula. ALGOL (Algorithmic Language) was developed in Europe as a machi
ne-independent language for specifying algorighms for problem solving. 
It divorced itself form the computer to such an extent that Input and O
utput commands were not specified. As computers moved out of the realm 
of mathematical calculators, there was need for a language for commeric
al programming. For some time the language COBOL (Common Business Orien
ted Language) had been under development. COBOL was designed to be very
 close to normal written English and it became established as the langu
age for the programming of commercial applications. This resulted in th
e specification of COBOL 66 in 1996. Since then, many programming langu
ages have emarged, both as extensions to the early ones and as new deve
lpments. Particularly, there have appeared heavily specialized language
s for writing language compilers, operating systems, real-time systems 
and transaction processing systems, and a number of more general-purpos
e languages. Another significant development has been the design of com
puters with the needs of the high-level language in mind. Although the 
initial impetus was to produce languages that made the production of ma
chine code easier it has been found by experience that high-level progr
amming languages also have other benefits.