Programming Domains

Programming domains deals with the areas & computer a pplications and their associated languages. Some of them are: 1. Scie Scient ntif ific ic appl applic icati ation onss The first digital computers, which appeared in the 1940’s, are invented for scientific applications. In the II world war, the US defense department wanted a computer that could easily calculate the values in their applications like trajectory of missiles. Characteristics: a) Consists of simple data structures  b) Can do large number of floating point arithmetic. The main languages that were developed were FORTRAN, ALGOL 60. 2. Busi Busines nesss appl applic icat atio ions ns The use of computers for business applications began in 1950’s Characteristics: The business people wanted a programming language that can a) produ produce ce elabo elabora rate te repor reports ts  b) have precise precise way of of describing describing and and sorting sorting decimal decimal numbers numbers and character character data. data. c) The ability ability to specify specify decimal decimal arithmet arithmetic ic operation operations. s. COBOL (Common business oriented language) was the first high level language for business With the advent of minicomputers small business people are used computers and some of its tools like spreadsheet systems and database system. 3. Arti Artifi fici cial al intel intelli lige gence nce In the years of 1960, artificial intelligence played a very important role. Characteristics: AI is a broad area of computer applications characterized by a) use of symbolic symbolic rather rather than numeric numeric computation computation i.e it must must contain contain symbols, symbols, names names  b) more flexib flexible le language language for symbolic symbolic computation computation c) The ability ability to to create create and execute execute some some code segments segments during execution. execution. The main languages that were developed during this time were the LISP and PROLOG. These were mainly used for logic programming like designing moves of chess. 4. Syst System emss Prog Progra ramm mmin ing g In the 1960’s and 1970’s system software was used. The OS & all of the programming support tools of a computer system are collectively known as its system software. System software is almost used continuously. Characteristics: The system software must have the following a) As it is continuously used it must be efficient.  b) It must have low level features that allow the s/w interface to external devices to be written c) It must provide security Developed Languages I) IBM for mainframes developed PL/s , a dialect of PL/I II) For digital systems BLISS was developed III) for Burroughs extended ALGOL IV) Unix OS was written almost in C But it is too dan gerous to use C on large important Systems. 5. Scri Script ptin ing g Langu Languag ages es These languages have evolved over the last 25 years. Characteristics: a) A scripting language is used by putting a list of commands, called a SCRIPT in a title to be executed.  b) For simple applications like file management and file filtering Languages Developed:

I) SH is the first scripting language with simple commands later control, flow statements variables, functions and other capabilities were added resulting in a complete programming language II) Ksh, developed David Kon III) AWK developed by AL ATO IV) TCL developed by John Outerhost V) PERL 6. Spec Specia iall Purp Purpos osee Langu Languag ages es They have evolved over o ver the past 40 yrs and these are designed for a particular specific purpose Languag Languages es Devel Develop op a) PPG PPG to to produc producee busine business ss repo reports rts b) API- for instructing programmable machine tools c) GPSS for system simiulation These are not used that much because of their narrow applicability.