o Some Fundamentals 0 5

to implement the algorithm on a particular computer system. These

instructions would be expressed in the statements of a particular computer
language, such as BASIC, Pascal, or C.

Higher-Level Languages
When computers were first developed, the only way they could be
programmed was in terms of binary numbers that corresponded directly to
specific machine instructions and locations in the computer's memory. The
next technological software advance occurred in the development of
assembly languages, which enabled the programmer to work with the
machine on a slightly higher level. Instead of having to specify sequences of
binary numbers to carry out particular tasks, the assembly language permits
the programmer to use symbolic names to perform various operations and to
refer to specific memory locations. A special program, known as an assembler,
translates the assembly language program from its symbolic format into the
specific machine instructions of the computer system.
Because there still exists a one-to-one correspondence between each
assembly language statement and a specific machine instruction, assembly
languages are regarded as low-level languages. The programmer must still
learn the instruction set of the particular computer system in order to write a
program in assembly language, and the resulting program is not transportable;
that is, the program will not run on a different computer model without being
rewritten. This is because different computer systems have different
instruction sets, and since assembly language programs are written in terms of
these instruction sets, they are machine dependent.
Then, along came the so-called higher-level languages, of which
FORTRAN was one of the first. Programmers developing programs in
FORTRAN no longer had to concern themselves with the architecture of the
particular computer, and operations performed in FORTRAN were of a much
more sophisticated or "higher level," far removed from the instruction set of
the particular machine. One FORTRAN instruction or statement would result
in many different machine instructions being executed, unlike the one-to-one
correspondence found between assembly language statements and machine
instructions.
Standardization of the syntax of a higher-level language meant that a
program could be written in the language to be machine independent. That is, a
program could be run on any machine that supported the language with little
or no changes.
In order to support a higher-level language, a special computer program
must be developed that translates the statements of the program developed in
the higher-level language into a form that the computer can understand-in
other words, into the particular instructions of the computer. Such a program
is known as a compiler.