Programming languages are tools for solving problems or for getting computational jobs done. Each programming language can be described as one tool in the programmer's toolbox. Some tasks are large size (e.g. calculate salaries for all the employees of a large company). Some are small (e.g. sum the numbers from 1 to 10). One size does not fit all, so programming languages were created for specific purposes. Hardware and fashion also play a part.
There are probably several reasons for this fact.
1) Specialization. Each programming language has its unique strengths and weaknesses that make it more or less applicable for a particular kind of software. For example, C and C++ are great for systems programming and computationally intensive programs. Java and C# are great for web applications and applications with graphical user interfaces. Perl is great for quick ad hoc programs that need diverse capabilities.
2) Preferences. Despite the first point, there is a lot of overlap in the capabilities of programming languages yet people choose different programming languages because the like the style of it more than another comparable programming language. For example, a web application could be written in Java or PHP, but someone may choose PHP because they like that style better. A scientific program could be written in C++ or C#, but the decision could come down to personal preference.
3) Evolution. The field of computer science is still relatively young and so new programming languages are still being created all the time. Its probably safe to say that most programming languages ever created only ever saw very minimal use. Many programming languages were created to try a new idea out or find a new and better way to make programs. Many of these experimental languages have influenced mainstream programming languages even though they may not see regular use anymore. In fact, languages like Java and C# have successfully attempted to assimilate many previous experimental programming language features. Also, because programming languages are still evolving, there is still much software in use that was written 20 or 30 years ago and never rewritten creating the need to keep older programming languages around such as Fortran.
There are so many because we're always finding new and better ways to create machine code. That's the entire point of any programming language; to produce machine code. Writing code in terms the machine can understand is extremely difficult, so we use high-level languages to abstract away the machine-dependencies and thus write code that is much closer to the problem domain, in terms that are much easier for a human to both express and understand. The language translator (compiler or interpreter) converts the high-level abstractions into low-level machine code.
High-level languages cover every programming language that is neither a low-level assembly language or native machine code. However, the amount of abstraction varies considerably. At the lower end of the scale we have C which has the fewest abstractions of any high-level language. At the upper end of the scale we have the highly abstract languages, including Java, Basic and C#.
There is no single language that can solve every type of problem. General purpose languages such as C and C++ are intended to solve a wide range of problems using a combination of low-level and high-level abstractions. But they cannot solve every type problem; at least not as easily as we can with a language that is more specific to the problem domain. However, we can use C and C++ to create efficient language translators for any language, including languages that do not yet exist. So long as there are problems to solve there will always be the need to improve upon existing languages as well as creating new ones.
Of course some high-level languages are no longer used. Mostly this is down to fundamental changes in the hardware and it was often easier to develop a new language by modifying an existing language. For instance, Speedcode led to ALGOL 58, ALGOL 60, ALGOL 68, CPL, BCPL, B and finally C. Some of the earlier languages, particularly ALGOL, influenced many other languages, some of which are still in use today. However C was by far the most popular language hence many of the languages that came after it use some variation on the C-style syntax and grammar, including C++ (which was actually influenced by Simula rather than C), Java and even JavaScript.
No. Q-Basic is no longer supported by it's creator and therefore should not be used. Qbasic was designed to work with the old MS-DOS or similar operating systems. Programs written in Qbasic can't take advantage of the resources available in modern operating systems. I would recommend using something like Visual Basic, VB.Net, C++, Java or one of several programming languages available today.
Dennis Ritchie was the creator of the C programming language. He created it while at AT&T Bell Labs and officially debuted in 1972. Many Object Oriented programming languages today are based off of this language including C# (go figure). He was also key in developing the Unix operating system.
Almost any computer language can do GUI manipulations if provided by a GUI library. Some can be add-ons because the language itself does not have a direct method of doing GUI drawing, etc.Languages such as C and C++ for example do not have a native GUI interface because they are not tied directly to a machine architecture or to an operating systems platform. However, that is not to say that they cannot do GUI manipulations; it just isn't built into the language, but there are 3rd party add-ons that do the manipulations for you.Other languages, such as C# and Java, have built-in gUI libraries that work the same way regardless of the Operating System they are on. In that way they support GUI operators natively, without the use of an add-on GUI library.
The "machine language" and "assembly language" for each CPU architecture are the lowest-level programming languages. The "Forth language" and the "C programming language" are perhaps the most popular non-CPU-specific low-level programming languages. They were once considered high-level programming languages, and certainly they are at a higher level than assembly language, but now they are considered low-level programming languages when compared to the much higher-level languages available today (Python, Java, C++, etc). Low-level programming languages provide little or no abstraction from the CPU's instruction set architecture; typically they interact with the hardware directly.
Internet programming is something totally different from other programming paradigms. I have a little programming experience with C and C++. And I have a good experience with HTML,CSS,PHP and SQL. All web pages consist of HTML tags. In fact the HTML tags represent the page. HTML programming is much easier than C/C++. And no matter what programming languages or frameworks (PHP,ADO,ASP .NET(C#,VB),SQL) we use they are embedded in HTML code while programming web applications. But this is not the case with computer programming. In fact web programming is much much easier than computer programming. it is enjoyable as well!!! But if you program webpages with Flash and ActionScript the webpages get totally different. At first you need to create a SWF file via Flash and ActionScript and then embed it in your web page via HTML.
"Berkeleydb" refers to a software library with an embedded database. This library is written in the C language, with support for most programming languages. It is the most widely used toolkit available today.
No. Q-Basic is no longer supported by it's creator and therefore should not be used. Qbasic was designed to work with the old MS-DOS or similar operating systems. Programs written in Qbasic can't take advantage of the resources available in modern operating systems. I would recommend using something like Visual Basic, VB.Net, C++, Java or one of several programming languages available today.
There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. However, many of these languages are endangered and at risk of disappearing.
Dennis Ritchie was the creator of the C programming language. He created it while at AT&T Bell Labs and officially debuted in 1972. Many Object Oriented programming languages today are based off of this language including C# (go figure). He was also key in developing the Unix operating system.
It depends what course you've signed up for. However, if you're looking for a career in IT, you should at least have an appreciation of ALL programming languages in use today, including assembly, C, C++, C# and Java. You don't need a working knowledge of them, just what they are capable of, where they are used and why they are used. It would be advantageous to have a working knowledge of at least one programming language, even if it is just BASIC, the simplest of all languages.
Just because we already have programming languages does not mean we cannot evolve new languages. Those earlier languages wouldn't even exist had they not been evolved from earlier languages. Prior to the development of the C programming language there was the B programming language, which was itself a variant of Combined Programming Language (CPL) known as Basic CPL (or BCPL). The B programming language could not address memory at the byte level, thus modifying the B language to meet this demand resulted in the C language. While many of the early languages have fallen into disuse, the general-purpose nature of C made it extremely popular across a wide range of programming fields. Virtually every program you use today relies on C code at some point. So although we have new languages to write programs, including C++ which effectively replaces C completely, there is still a great deal of C code out there, and it all needs to be maintained. Some of it will eventually be replaced with new code, but there's no point in replacing code unless you can replace it with something that works more efficiently.
There are around 7,000 languages spoken on Earth today.
There are approximately 7,117 languages spoken on Earth today.
There are approximately 7,117 languages spoken in the world today.
There are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today.
Almost any computer language can do GUI manipulations if provided by a GUI library. Some can be add-ons because the language itself does not have a direct method of doing GUI drawing, etc.Languages such as C and C++ for example do not have a native GUI interface because they are not tied directly to a machine architecture or to an operating systems platform. However, that is not to say that they cannot do GUI manipulations; it just isn't built into the language, but there are 3rd party add-ons that do the manipulations for you.Other languages, such as C# and Java, have built-in gUI libraries that work the same way regardless of the Operating System they are on. In that way they support GUI operators natively, without the use of an add-on GUI library.
Today, all or parts of the Bible are available in over 2,400 languages and dialects.