
Students' Guide to
Business
Computing
High-level languages
High-level languages were developed mainly in the 1960s and have
evolved since then. They are often now described as
third generation
languages,
in order to distinguish them from the more recent fourth
generation languages. In modern terms, high-level languages are not
very powerful, but they are relatively easy to learn and use. They also
have the advantage, in most cases, of being fairly standardized;
indeed, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) have
specified a standard syntax for several well-known languages.
Standardization is important, because it enables portable