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Are Fortran, Cobol, Basic and Forth high level programming languages?

And if not, what where the first high level programming languages?

Which were the first object-oriented languages?

Mechanical snail
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Aaron de Windt
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    What are your definitions of high-level and object-oriented programming languages? Without definitions a valid answer to this question cannot be given. Take a look at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HighLevelLanguage as an example of why definition matters. – Wildcat Jun 06 '10 at 17:21
  • @kermisto: I think Aaron is actually asking for SO's definition of the term. – intuited Jun 07 '10 at 02:30

9 Answers9

8

Fortran - first high level programming language.

Simula - first object-oriented language.

0xAX
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High-level isn't a binary value. There are a whole range of languages in a spectrum from low-level to high-level.

The languages you named are higher level than assembly, but lower level than Lisp.

According to Wikipedia:

The first high-level programming language to be designed for a computer was Plankalkül, created by Konrad Zuse.

Mark Byers
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CoBOL is technically considered a "high-level" language. It has some functions, and does some elements of memory management. But in the scale of languages, I'd rank it about half of a step above assembler. This is my approximation from my experience with all of these, please edit the response if you want to contribute some more languages.

  • 0 - Binary machine code
  • 0.5 - Assembler
  • 1.0 - CoBOL, Fortran, Pascal, C
  • 1.5 - C++
  • 2.0 - VB6
  • 2.5 - C#, VB .Net, Java, etc
  • 3.0 - Javascript, CSS, SQL
Abacus
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"High-level" can have different meanings -- some languages are at higher-levels than others, abstracting farther away from the machine. The original FORTRAN was delivered in 1957 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran) and was, AFAIK, the first implemented language at a higher level than assembly. Other languages since then can be classified as higher-level. For example, the current Fortran standard, Fortran 2003, has a much higher level of abstraction than the original FORTRAN, providing array operations, some OO features, etc.

M. S. B.
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COBOL and FORTRAN (as they are now) as higher level than C. The abstraction of underlying machine is greater. One should expect a COBOL program - even of considerable complexity - to compile on Windows or *Nix without alteration. The same is true of Fortran (though my knowledge is more out of date here).

The latest versions of COBOL are very high level - see managed cobol here: http://knol.google.com/k/alex-turner/micro-focus-managed-cobol/2246polgkyjfl/4#

Please note - I work for a COBOL company - Micro Focus. This might mean my input is biased :)

alex turner
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The first OO language was probably Simula, though not many people knew it until Smalltalk came along.

High Performance Mark
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    Simula-67, not just Simula. Simula-I was not OOP. – JUST MY correct OPINION Jun 06 '10 at 14:34
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    He said Simula not Simula-I. Simula is common name for both Simula I and Simula 67. And even language creators said that: "SIMULA I (1962-65) and Simula 67 (1967) are the two first object-oriented languages." From http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~kristen/FORSKNINGSDOK_MAPPE/F_OO_start.html – Wildcat Jun 06 '10 at 17:12
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As for your last question:

Among the first object oriented programming languages was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula

The first more or less popular object-oriented language was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk

efi
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They do since they hide computer hardware abstraction, so they can be considered as high-level.

The first object-oriented language was SmallTalk, according to Wikipedia.

CharlesB
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    Wikipedia is wrong. Simula-67, as you can guess by the name, was made in 1967. Smalltalk was made in the '70s. – JUST MY correct OPINION Jun 06 '10 at 14:34
  • He's oversimplifying. Wikipedia actually says "The Simula programming language was the first to introduce the concepts underlying object-oriented programming" while "Smalltalk was the first programming language to be *called* 'object-oriented'". – Ken Jun 07 '10 at 02:02
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    @Ken: Smalltalk may have been _called_ object-oriented, but Simula _was_ object-oriented, and introduced the "class" concept. – John Saunders Jun 07 '10 at 02:10
  • Simula-67 had been around for a few years when Dahl got around to writing his section of "Structured Programming" (Dahl, Dijkstra, & Hoare, Academic Press, 1972), which laid out the basic concepts of object-oriented programming. Dahl was one of the designers of Simula-67. – John R. Strohm Jul 08 '10 at 20:38
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It's all relative. C is low level for those who write Python, C++ for Java developers and so on.

As for the OP's question, yes Fortran is certainly high level. Modern Fortran is almost like MATLAB.

Bill the Lizard
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rusi.pathan
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