WEEK 7 ASSIGNMENT

Programming Language



Programming Language

What does it mean to say that a programming language is machine independent?

At a very simple and basic level, this could mean that the instruction sets are not the same, the instructions set differ. Arranging a particular pattern of bits through a processor will result in completely different outcomes than the same set of bits.

Languages which are of a higher level tend to get over with this because computers do the same things, however in ways that are way different. ARM has the ability for adding a couple of numbers together the same way as an x86 processor does. It can load data from the RAM into the registers, same as x86 does.

All the high-level constructs can be reduced eventually into a fundamental operations set that has an ability to show performance through all the machines that are meant for general purpose. However, a few constructs might turn out to be more efficient on certain CPUs than others. Compilers parse the high-level language and tend to minimize it to the machine language of the targeted system. Very often, only the selected bits of the compiler need to be formed freshly for new CPUs. Certain compilers, like GCC, for instance, are required to be built as layers which greatly shorten this work. An individual highly-skilled developer having familiarity with the compilers and platforms targeted could go producing a rudimentary port quite easily.

Name and describe four different programming paradigms.

Programming paradigm is a structural method of program writing, which is both, syntactical and Structural in nature. Since languages have become sophisticated through development, therefore the paradigms too have become sophisticated.

There are over a dozens of programming paradigms, however, we will be discussing only the four major which exist today. These are imperative, functional,

Logic and object-oriented programming, (Laird, 2009). They are described as under:

Imperative programming

Machine languages, were the earliest imperative languages, therefore imperative programming has a popularity of being the earliest known programming paradigm. The first of such was the FORTRAN, developed in 1954, (U.S, 1996).

This kind of programming forms the base of all the hardware implementations, as it is straight forward and closely resembles the machine language. In this type of programming,

Instructions are the statements at a local machine-level, and thus comprise of the states and variables pointing right in the direction of the memory. Every step is considered as an instruction, and all the ideas are applied directly on the hardware.

Functional languages

Consist of the concepts that, on a very basic level, are alien to the various other paradigms, however all of the most useful languages utilize more than a single programming paradigm, therefore the existence of the functional concepts is in various programming languages. The major ideas of the functional programming are in the high order and basic functions, evaluation of equations and most importantly pattern, (Hudak, 1989).

Logic Programming

It is one that is mostly utilized in various different paradigms than having basic logically based ...