GENERAL PURPOSE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

Before the development of computer or programming, people did their jobs manually. It used to take a lot of time but they had no choice. Then the computer era came, and now the jobs to be done were fed on the system. It considerably reduced the amount of time taken for the completion of the same task.

Moving further,according to the law of nature, need for evolution was felt, existing systems were then improved for time and purpose.

Simultaneously, many different categories of programming languages came into existence based on the needs of the programmer or the purpose of program development.

Some of them were found efficient for a wide range of purpose, some for specific. Hence the programming languages based on purpose were categorized as: General purpose and domain specific programming languages.

Some programming languages are designed specially to suit or a meet a particular need, they are called as domain specific programming languages, as they are made to meet the needs of a particular sphere.

"The programming languages which can meet the needs of individual domain are called as domain specific programming languages."

E.g.

• FORTAN and APL are suitable for programming related to mathematical purpose.
• ML, OCAML, Haskell are appropriate for research work.
• Lisp is favorable for AI related work.
• C is believed to be suitable only for system programs.

With the domain specific programming languages, we have another category of programming language, which are designed to suit a wide range of domains and are called general purpose programming languages.

"The programming languages which can fulfill the needs of a wide variety of domains are called as general purpose programming languages."

These languages can fulfill more than one purpose, for example they can be apt for mathematical calculations, research work and application development at the same time.

For example

• Java can be used for developing interactive webpages as well as making games.
• C++ can be used for writing applications as well as developing system programs.
• Python, Perl, Ruby can be used for web programming as well as development of desktop applications.

But while learning about general purpose programming languages, it is important to note that every language has its specialty or a domain in which it is the best. Such as Python is best as a scripting language, C++ is best for system programming.

A list of various general purpose programming languages:

• Java
• Ruby
• Python
• C
• C++
• D
• Dart
• C#

Although we have much general purpose programming languages but each language is best for a cause or purpose and may not be as good for other purpose.