A third-generation programming language (3GL) is a refinement of a second-generation programming language. The second generation of programming languages brought logical structure to software. The third generation brought refinements to make the languages more programmer-friendly. This includes features like improved support for aggregate data types, and expressing concepts in a way that favours the programmer, not the computer (e.g. no longer needing to state the length of multi-character (string) literals in Fortran). A third generation language improves over a second generation language by having the computer take care of non-essential details, not the programmer. "High level language" is a synonym for third-generation programming language.
First introduced in the late 1950s, Fortran, ALGOL, and COBOL are early examples of this sort of language.
Most popular general-purpose languages today, such as C, C++, C#, Java, BASIC and Delphi, are also third-generation languages.
Most 3GLs support structured programming.
|
|||||