It’s End but It will never end.

This weeks our class has come to the ends. So thats come to our assignments. This is the last day that our blog will be evaluated. SCK 1413 is a subjects that relates to IT but it is only at basic levels. What we learn is only on the surface of IT.

Differs from IT courses that we take on Diploma....

Our group members are all direct intake students which takes diploma before study for undergraduate programes. We have learn almost similar subjects before. Although there are similarity in contents of the course but there is differents approach used by the two lecturers. Madam Sharin seems to be more passionate about IT and these effects on the way she teach us. We are told about update software and harware also the enviroment around IT that occurs recently. For example our assignments is asked to described about something currently being used by the students that are e-learning and Edmodo. If there is no assignments that asked doing such things, we cant even know what features that it software, web can gives benefits to students. Differents when we study at diploma what we learns only on bsic thing such as using the basic microsoft office tools.

It will never end..........

Although there is no class for us on SCK 1413 it doesn’t ,mean that we will stop learning about IT. What has being told by Madam Sharin is an ‘eye opener’ for us to learn more. Information technology is improving from day to day and almost all thing that what we done needs to use information technlogy. Futhermore as students of management technology, IT is very importants either to works or to manage until the small part of works. It is related with human, data, software, hardware and procedure.

Thanks to the lecturer....

We want to say thank you very much to our lecturer, Madam Sharin for all what she have teach to us. Although sometimes we are not very disipline she still insist on teaching us and answer all question that being asked to her. Opinion and passionate that she shows on her teaching really makes us learn and will be used in our future in learning and using IT also in all things that can bring us to improved as a human.

The 5 different generations of languages

          There are currently five generations of computer programming languages. In each generation, the languages syntax has become easier to understand and more human-readable.So, the 5 types is:

Low-level of programming language:

• First generation languages (abbreviated as 1GL)
  Represent the very early, primitive computer languages that consisted entirely of 1's and 0's - the actual language that the computer understands (machine language). 

• Second generation languages (2GL)
  Represent a step up from from the first generation languages. Allow for the use of symbolic names instead of just numbers. Second generation languages are known as assembly languages. Code written in an assembly language is converted into machine language (1GL). 

 High-level of programming language:

• Third generation languages (3GL)
  With the languages introduced by the third generation of computer programming, words and commands (instead of just symbols and numbers) were being used. These languages therefore, had syntax that was much easier to understand. Third generation languages are known as "high level languages" and include C, C++, Java, and Javascript, among others.

• Fourth generation languages (4GL)
• Problem Oriented Language
  The syntax used in 4GL is very close to human language, an improvement from the pervious generation of languages. 4GL languages are typically used to access databases and include SQL and ColdFusion, among others. 

• Fifth generation languages (5GL)
• Problem and Constraint Programming Language
  Fifth generation languages are currently being used for neural networks. A nueral network is a form of artifical intelligence that attempts to imitate how the human mind works. 

Source from: ://www.landofcode.com/programming-intro/computer-programming-languages.php

Technology and UTM People

In this post we are going to discusses about 4 types of people and we wants to relates it with UTM people that we have experience on facing it. The 4 type is  

Proactivity

Proactive persons looks at technology in a positive and realistic way. Proactives means acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes. For example our Madam Sharin can be slotted in this type of person. Not to ask for more marks, our point of view see she passionate about IT and someone who passionate about something  are likely to adapt with change.

Cynicism

The cynics feel that new technology is overated and too troublesome to learn. Some cynics openly express their doubts and others pretend to be interested.

Naivete

Naive people may be unfamiliar or quite familiar with computers. Even those who are familiar with technology often underestimates the time and difficulty of using technology to generate information. From our point of views older generation of lecturer have this kind of attitudes. Sometimes they dont even know how to on the projectors and how to connects theirs microcomputers to it.

Frustration

Frustrated users are impatient and irritiated about taking time to learn new technology. Often these people have too much to do, find manuals difficult to understand, and feel stupid. For example when madam Sahrin asked students to do assignments about Edmodo and E-learning. Because of these students are come from managements field they find that web analysis is very hard to do  and finally they doing it simply and take it for granted.

Programming language

There are as many ways to determine and rank the most popular computer programming languages. Most programmers have a particular favorite they prefer to write code, and each one has a take on why their programming language of choice should be the one used. That being said, each of the most popular languages has its advantages of disadvantages.

If you want to develope a strong, unique and special program/application, you should choose lower level programming language such as machine and assembly language. Usually this kind of language are being use in large industries to support their business as well as have more secure system.

But if you want to just create a simple program or just for fun, you should use a high level language, because it is easier to use compare to lower level language. It is suitable for small company as long as the programmer is meeting customer requirements on time and within budget and only have sufficient requirement to operate their business.

for more information, visit :
http://www.devtopics.com/most-popular-programming-languages/
http://www.langpop.com/
http://www.ariel.com.au/a/teaching-programming.html
http://www.uaseducation.com/articles/1592/1/Most-Popular-Computer-Programming-Languages/Page1.html

A Journey Through Programming Language Generations

Programming languages have evolved tremendously since early 1950's and this evolution has resulted in over hundreds of different languages being invented and used in the industry. This revolution is needed as we can now instruct computers more easily and faster than ever before due to technological advancement in hardware with fast processors like the 200MHz Pentium Pro developed by Intel®. The increase in quantities and speed powerful computers are being produced now, more capable of handling complex codes from different languages from this generation, like Appware and PROLOG, will prompt language designers to design more efficient codes for various applications. This article will be going down memory lane to look at past five generations of languages and looking at how they revolutionise the computer industry.

We start out with the first and second generation languages during the period of 1950-60, which to many experienced programmers will say are machine and assembly languages. Programming language history really began with the work of Charles Babbage in the early nineteenth century who developed automated calculation for mathematical functions. Further developments in early 1950 brought us machine language without interpreters and compilers to translate languages. Micro-code is an example of the first generation language residing in the CPU written for doing multiplication or division. Computers then were programmed in binary notation that was very prone to errors. A simple algorithm resulted in lengthy code. This was then improved to mnemonic codes to represent operations.

Symbolic assembly codes came next in the mid 1950's, the second generation of programming language like AUTOCODER, SAP and SPS. Symbolic addresses allowed programmers to represent memory locations, variables and instructions with names. Programmers now had the flexibility not to change the addresses for new locations of variables whenever they are modified. This kind of programming is still considered fast and to program in machine language required high knowledge of the CPU and machine's instruction set. This also meant high hardware dependency and lack of portability. Assembly or machine code could not run on different machines. Example, code written for the Intel® Processor family would look very different for code written for the Motorola 68X00 series. To convert would mean changing a whole length of code.

Throughout the early 1960's till 1980 saw the emergence of the third generation programming languages. Languages like ALGOL 58, 60 and 68, COBOL, FORTRAN IV, ADA and C are examples of this and were considered as high level languages. Most of this languages had compilers and the advantage of this was speed. Independence was another factor as these languages were machine independent and could run on different machines. The advantages of high level languages include the support for ideas of abstraction so that programmers can concentrate on finding the solution to the problem rapidly, rather than on low-level details of data representation. The comparative ease of use and learning, improved portability and simplified debugging, modifications and maintenance led to reliability and lower software costs.

These languages were mostly created following von Neumann constructs which had sequential procedural operations and code executed using branches and loops. Although the syntax between these languages were different but they shared similar constructs and were more readable by programmers and users compared to assembly languages. Some languages were improved over time and some were influenced by previous languages, taking the desired features thought to be good and discarding unwanted ones. New features were also added to the desired features to make the language more powerful.

COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language), a business data processing language is an example of a language constantly improving over the decades. It started out with a language called FLOWMATIC in 1955 and this language influenced the birth of COBOL-60 in 1959. Over the years, improvements were done to this language and COBOL 61, 65, 68, 70 were developed, being recognised as a standard in 1961. Now the new COBOL 97 has included new features like Object Oriented Programming to keep up with current languages. One good possible reason for this is the fact that existing code is important and to totally develop a new language from start would be a lengthy process. This also was the rationalisation behind the developments of C and C++.

Then, there were languages that evolved from other languages like LISP1 developed in 1959 for artificial intelligence work, evolving into the 1.5 version and had strong influences languages like MATHLAB, LPL and PL/I. Language like BALM had the combined influence of ALGOL-60 and LISP 1.5. These third generation languages are less processor dependent than lower level languages. An advantage in languages like C++ is that it gives the programmers a lot of control over how things are done in creating applications. This control however calls for more in depth knowledge of how the operating system and computer works. Many of the real programmers now still prefer to use these languages despite the fact the programmer having to devote a substantial professional effort to the leaning of a new complicated syntax which sometimes have little relation to human-language syntax even if it is in English.

Third generation languages often followed procedural code, meaning the language performs functions defined in specific procedures on how something is done. In comparison, most fourth generation languages are nonprocedural. A disadvantage with fourth generation languages was they were slow compared to compiled languages and they also lacked control. Powerful languages of the future will combine procedural code and nonprocedural statements together with the flexibility of interactive screen applications, a powerful way of developing application. Languages specifying what is accomplished but not how, not concerned with the detailed procedures needed to achieve its target like in graphic packages, applications and report generators. The need for this kind of languages is in line with minimum work and skill concept, point and click, programmers who are end users of software applications designed using third generation languages unseen by the commercial users. Programmers whose primary interests are programming and computing use third generation languages and programmers who use the computers and programs to solve problems from other applications are the main users of the fourth generation languages.

Features evident in fourth generation languages quite clearly are that it must be user friendly, portable and independent of operating systems, usable by non-programmers, having intelligent default options about what the user wants and allowing the user to obtain results fasts using minimum requirement code generated with bug-free code from high-level expressions (employing a data-base and dictionary management which makes applications easy and quick to change), which was not possible using COBOL or PL/I. Standardisation however, in early stages of evolution can inhibit creativity in developing powerful languages for the future. Examples of this generation of languages are IBM's ADRS2, APL, CSP and AS, Power Builder, Access.

The 1990's saw the developments of fifth generation languages like PROLOG, referring to systems used in the field of artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic and neural networks. This means computers can in the future have the ability to think for themselves and draw their own inferences using programmed information in large databases. Complex processes like understanding speech would appear to be trivial using these fast inferences and would make the software seem highly intelligent. In fact, these databases programmed in a specialised area of study would show a significant expertise greater than humans. Also, improvements in the fourth generation languages now carried features where users did not need any programming knowledge. Little or no coding and computer aided design with graphics provides an easy to use product that can generate new applications.

What does the next generation of languages hold for us? The sixth generation? That is pretty uncertain at the moment. With fast processors, like in fifth generation computers, able to have multiple processors operating in parallel to solve problems simultaneously will probably ignite a whole new type of language being designed. The current trend of the Internet and the World Wide Web could cultivate a whole new breed of radical programmers for the future, now exploring new boundaries with languages like HTML and Java. What happens next is entirely dependent on the future needs of the whole computer and communications industry. Microsoft simply says, "Where do you want to go today?"

References

History of Programming Languages, Richard L. Wexelblat (ed.), Academic Press 1981.

Fourth Generation Languages Volume 1: Principles, by James Martin and Joe Leben, Prentice Hall. 1986
High Level Languages and Their Compilers, Des Watson, Addison-Wesley, 1989.

The used of Software Languages

       
This software languages for creating executable programs. Can create anything from simple console programs that print some text to the screen to entire operating systems. Vary greatly in terms of power and complexity.Types:

• C
  An advanced programming language used for software application development. Originally developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the 1970's and designed to be a systems programming language but since then has proven itself to be able to be used for various software applications such as business programs, engineering programs, and even games. The UNIX operating system is written in C.
• C++
  Descendant of the C language. The difference between the two languages is that C++ is object-oriented. C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs and is a very popular language for graphical applications.
• Visual Basic
  A language developed by Microsoft based on the BASIC language . Visual Basic is used for creating Windows applications. The VBScript language (also developed by Microsoft) is based on Visual Basic.
• Java
  A powerful and flexible language created by Sun MicroSystems that can be used to create applets (a program that is executed from within another program) that run inside webpages as well as software applications. Things you can do with Java include interacting with the user, creating graphical programs, reading from files, and more. Java is often confused with Javascript, but they are two different languages. Learn Java at our Java tutorials section. 

Source from : www.landofcode.com/programming-intro/computer-programming-languages.php

Web languages

            It used for creating and editing pages on the web. Can do anything from putting plain text on a webpage, to accessing and retrieving data from a database. Vary greatly in terms of power and complexity.

• HTML
  Hyper Text Markup Language. The core language of the world wide web that is used to define the structure and layout of web pages by using various tags and attributes. Although a fundamental language of the web, HTML is static - content created with it does not change. HTML is used to specify the content a webpage will contain, not how the page functions. Learn HTML at our HTML tutorials section. 

• XML
  Extensible Markup Language. A language developed by the W3C which works like HTML, but unlike HTML, allows for custom tags that are defined by programmers. XML allows for the transmission of data between applications and organizations through the use of its custom tags. 

• Javascript
  A language developed by Netscape used to provide dynamic and interactive content on webpages. With Javascript it is possible to communicate with HTML, create animations, create calculators, validate forms, and more. Javascript is often confused with Java, but they are two different languages. Learn Javascript at our Javascript tutorials section. 

• VBScript
  Visual Basic Scripting Edition. A language developed by Microsoft that works only in Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and web browsers based on the Internet Explorer engine such as FlashPeak's Slim Browser. VBScript Can be used to print dates, make calculations, interact with the user, and more. VBScript is based on Visual Basic, but it is much simpler. Learn VBScript at our VBScript tutorials section.

• PHP
  Hypertext Preprocessor (it's a recursive acronym). A powerful language used for many tasks such as data encryption, database access, and form validation. PHP was originally created in 1994 By Rasmus Lerdorf. Learn PHP at our PHP tutorials section. 

• Java
  A powerful and flexible language created by Sun MicroSystems that can be used to create applets (a program that is executed from within another program) that run inside webpages as well as software applications. Things you can do with Java include interacting with the user, creating graphical programs, reading from files, and more. Java is often confused with Javascript, but they are two different languages. Learn Java at our Java tutorials section. 

Source from: http://www.landofcode.com/programming-intro/computer-programming