Programming language generations

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Programming languages have been classified into several programming language generations. This series of buzzwords was popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Historically, this classification was used to indicate increasing power of programming styles. Later writers have somewhat redefined the meanings as distinctions previously seen as important became less significant to current practice. The terms first-generation and second-generation programming language were not used prior to the coining of the term third-generation. None of these three terms are mentioned in early compendiums of programming languages. As early as May 1966 computers were advertised as third generation computers. This buzzword was reused to advertise programming languages as third generation languages within the same year. It is synonymous to the buzzword high-level programming language which was coined 1964 or a bit earlier. In 1957 Bob Bemer still called programming with a high-level language “automatic programming”. Machine...

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