🚀 go-pugleaf

TANG wrote:
> 
> hi ! currently i'm looking for 3rd and 4th genaration language information.
> hope somebody can help me.

This isn't the answer you wanted, but it's an answer
*about* your question, with an attempt at a direct
answer towards the end.

The first time I heard these terms was after the Japanese
fifth generation project was announced.   The five generations
were for hardware and were valves, transistors, ICs, VLSIs,
and massively parallel dataflow architectures.   The last of
these were supposed to run Prolog which didn't map particularly
well onto the hardware.   By definition then, Prolog was *the*
fifth generation language.  The fifth generation project was
a notable failure for a variety of reasons I won't go into
here.

The term 4th generation language is then what etymologists
would call a back-formation, as in the original definition,
the terms were (with the exception of Prolog as a fifth-
generation language) for hardware.

To get back to your question, 4th generation languages
were special purpose languages which allowed routine data
processing tasks, with form-based user interfaces, to be
developed quickly.   They were usually proprietary.

Third generation languages were the general purpose
languages (notable COBOL and perhaps PL/1) which they
were supposed to replace.

> tang

Le Hibou (ma propre opinion)

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