Tradução do Texto Computer Language

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COMPUTER LANGUAGE

The power of a digital computer lies in the rapidity with which it can execute many instructions. Each instruction executed by the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of a computer performs a small part of a much larger task. In the early days of electronic computers it was recognized that the computer itself could be used to translate powerful instructions automatically into sequences of elementary instructions. Thus the concept of computer languages was born.
Machine and Assembly Languages
A CPU operates by responding to differences in electrical voltages. Higher and lower voltages are represented in the most basic computer language – machine language – by the binary digits zero and one. Machine-language programs are composed of long strings of BINARY NUMBERS and are difficult to understand. Assembly language is a step up from machine language. It allows the computer programmer to think in terms of cumulative operations, such as addition and subtraction, rather than the more basic electrical modulations. An assembler program translates such operations into a machine-language program. Machine and assembly languages are called low-level languages.
High-Level Languages
Computer programmers need to express problems in a form that is independent of the design of the CPU. They also prefer not to specify every detail of an operation when writing COMPUTER SOFTWARE. So high-level, or symbolic, computer languages have been developed witth a high-level language a user can obtain the sum of two numbers by giving the computer a command such as “PRINT 512 + 637.” For this to happen, high-level languages must be translated into low-level languages. This is accomplished, within the computer, by either a COMPILER or an INTERPRETER.
A compiler program translates a source program into machine language and executes it. An interpreter program reads individual words of a source program, causing the consecutive executions of partial segments of a