Department of software engineering

Introduction to software engineering and computing

(SWEG2101)

Individual assignment

Name: Temesgen belay

Id: 1337/16

Submitted to: Mr. Yaynshet Medhin

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Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 3
Evolution of computers...................................................................................................................... 4
Evolutional (historical) back ground of computer ........................................................................... 4
Generation of computers................................................................................................................... 6
1st generation computers ............................................................................................................... 6
2nd generation computers .............................................................................................................. 6
3rd generation computers............................................................................................................... 7
4th generation computers............................................................................................................... 7
5th generation computers............................................................................................................... 8
Programming languages in each generation....................................................................................... 8
In 1st generation............................................................................................................................. 9
In 2nd generation............................................................................................................................ 9
In 3rd generation ............................................................................................................................ 9
In 4th generation .......................................................................................................................... 10
In 5th generation .......................................................................................................................... 10
Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 13
References....................................................................................................................................... 14

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Introduction
In the following text we are going to see about the history about the evolution of computers,
their generations, the programming language used in each generation and finally we will see
the comparison between each generation in general way.
Computers have changed rapidly since their 1st use, evolving from primitive mechanical
devices to advanced electronic systems capable of complex tasks. The evolution of computers
represents a remarkable journey from simple mechanical calculators to complex machines
capable of performing billions of calculations per second. The text incudes the milestones in
the evolution of computers.
As we explore the historical timeline of computer development, we will uncover the
milestones that have shaped the modern computing landscape, the different generations of
computers characterized by unique technologies and capabilities, and the corresponding
evolution of programming languages that enable these machines to perform complex tasks.
Finally, we are going to compare and contrast each generation by using basic features and
variables that are different for each generation. These features are the basic one to divide the
evolution of computers in to generations.

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Write and briefly discuss the evolutions of computers.

Evolution of computers
A computer is an electronic device used to store retrieve and manipulate data. A computer
also defines as a programmable electromechanical device that accept instruction (program) to
direct the operations of the computers.
The computers in recent times have become a relevant tool particularly in the areas of
storage and dissemination of information. The ease with which the computer function, i.e. the
speed, accuracy and readiness. The world is becoming a global village through the use of
computer, thus there is the need for everyone to be computer illiterate.
The computer age was characterized by generation of computers, which signified that
computer had pass through stages of evolution or development. Before we could arrive at the
present-day computers, it has undergone stages of development known as generation of
computers.

Evolutional (historical) back ground of computer

The history of computer dated back to the period of scientific revolution (i.e. 1543 – 1678).
This progressed up to the period 1760 – 1830 which was the period of the industrial
revolution in Great Britain where the use of machine for production altered the British society
and the Western world. The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out of a
need to solve a serious number-crunching crisis.
The following brief history of computing is a timeline of how computers evolved from their
humble beginnings to the machines of today that surf the Internet, play games and stream
multimedia in addition to crunching numbers. The followings are historical events of
computer.
1623: Wilhelm Schickard designed and constructed the first working mechanical calculator.
1673: Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated a digital mechanical calculator, called the Stepped
Reckoner. He may be considered the first computer scientist and information theorist, for,
among other reasons, documenting the binary number system.
1822: English mathematician Charles Babbage (Father of Computer) conceives of a steam-
driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. The project,
funded by the English government, is a failure. More than a century later, however, the
world's first computer was actually built.
1890: Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate the 1880 census,
accomplishing the task in just three years and saving the government $5 million. He
establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM.
1936: Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine, later called the Turing
machine, capable of computing anything that is computable. The central concept of the
modern computer was based on his ideas.
1937: One hundred years after Babbage's impossible dream, Howard Aiken convinced IBM,
which was making all kinds of punched card equipment and was also in the calculator
business to develop his giant programmable calculator, the ASCC/Harvard Mark I, based on
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Babbage's Analytical Engine, which itself used cards and a central computing unit. When the
machine was finished, some hailed it as "Babbage's dream come true".
1941: Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, design a computer that can solve 29
equations simultaneously. This marks the first time a computer is able to store information on
its main memory.
1946: Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and receive funding from
the Census Bureau to build the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for business and
government applications.
1953: Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which eventually becomes known
as COBOL. Thomas Johnson Watson Jr., son of IBM CEO Thomas Johnson Watson Sr.,
conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Nations keep tabs on Korea during the war.
1954: The FORTRAN programming language, an acronym for FORmula TRANslation, is
developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus, according to the University
of Michigan.
1969: A group of developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX, an operating system that addressed
compatibility issues. Written in the C programming language.
1971: Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the "floppy disk," allowing
data to be shared among computers.
1973: Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet for
connecting multiple computers and other hardware.
981: The first IBM personal computer, code-named "Acorn," is introduced. It uses
Microsoft's MSDOS operating system. It has an Intel chip, two floppy disks and an optional
colour monitor.
1985: Microsoft announces Windows, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. This was the
company's response to Apple's graphical user interface (GUI).
2003: The first 64-bit processor, AMD's Athlon 64, becomes available to the consumer
market.
2006: Apple introduces the MacBook Pro, its first Intel-based, dual-core mobile computer, as
well as an Intel-based iMac. Nintendo's Wii game console hits the market.
2009: Microsoft launches Windows 7, which offers the ability to pin applications to the
taskbar and advances in touch and handwriting recognition, among other features.
2016: The first reprogrammable quantum computer was created. "Until now, there hasn't been
any quantum-computing platform that had the capability to program new algorithms into their
system
These and other main events in the evolutions of computers marked as the milestones for the
present form of computers and technological advancement.

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What are the different computer generations?

Generation of computers
Generation in computer terminology is a change in technology a computer is/was being used.
Initially, the generation term was used to distinguish between varying hardware technologies.
Nowadays, generation includes both hardware and software, which together make up an
entire computer system. There are five generation of computers known till date.

1st generation computers

The period of first generation was from 1946-1959. The computers of first generation used
vacuum tubes as the basic components for memory and circuitry for CPU (Central Processing
Unit). These tubes, like electric bulbs, produced a lot of heat and the installations used to fuse
frequently. They were very expensive to operate and in addition to using a great deal of
electricity, generated a lot of heat. Because of their size they may take up the entire rooms.
But they used as the 1 st device to hold memory.
The main features of these computers
 Used vacuum tube technology and supported machine language only
 Non portable and unreliable
 Huge size and need of AC
 Slow input and output devices
The main disadvantages were
 Very large in size
 Vacuum tubes burn frequently
 Producing heat
 Maintenance problem
Some computers of these generations were UNIVAC, IBM-701, ENIAC and others.

2nd generation computers

The period of second generation was from 1959-1965. In this generation, transistors were
used that were cheaper, consumed less power, more compact in size, more reliable and faster
than the first-generation machines made of vacuum tubes. In this generation, magnetic cores
were used as the primary memory and magnetic tape and magnetic disks as secondary storage
devices. In this generation, assembly language and high-level programming languages like
FORTRAN, COBOL were used. The computers used batch processing and
multiprogramming operating system. Second-generation computers moved from cryptic
binary machine language to symbolic. These were also the first computers that stored their
instructions in their memory. Some computers of these generations are IBM 7094, CDC 1604.
The main features of these computers

 Very much reliable, fast and reduced considerably

 Consumed less electricity as compared to first generation computers
 Still very costly and AC required
The main disadvantages were

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  They over heated quickly
 Maintenance problems

3rd generation computers

The period of third generation was from 1965-1971. The computers of third generation used
Integrated Circuits (ICs) in place of transistors. A single IC has many transistors, resistors,
and capacitors along with the associated circuitry.
The IC was invented by Jack Kilby. This development made computers smaller in size,
reliable, and efficient. In this generation remote processing, time-sharing, multi-programming
operating system were used. High-level languages (FORTRAN-II TO IV, COBOL, PASCAL
PL/1, BASIC, ALGOL-68 etc.) were used during this generation. Instead of punched cards
and printouts, users interacted with third generation computers through keyboards and
monitors and interfaced with an operating system. Allowed the device to run many different
applications at one time.
The main features of these computers

 Smaller size, Lesser maintenance, Generated less heat than the two previous
generations
 ICs are very small in size
 Improved performance
Disadvantage: ICs are sophisticated.
Some computers of this generation were: Honeywell-6000 series, TDC-316, IBM-360 series.

4th generation computers

The period of fourth generation was from 1971-1980. Computers of fourth generation used
Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits. VLSI circuits having about 5000 transistors and
other circuit elements with their associated circuits on a single chip made it possible to have
microcomputers of fourth generation. From the central processing unit and memory to
input/output controls—on a single chip.
Fourth generation computers became more powerful, compact, reliable, and affordable. As a
result, it gave rise to Personal Computer (PC) revolution. In this generation, time-sharing,
real-time networks, distributed operating system were used. All the high-level languages like
C, C++, DBASE etc., were used in this generation.
The main features of these computers
 No AC required
 Concept of internet was introduced
 Very small in size and very cheap
 Computers became easily available
Some computers of this generation were: CRAY-1(Super Computer), STAR 1000, CRAY-X-
MP (Super Computer).

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5th generation computers
The period of fifth generation is 1980-till date. In the fifth generation, VLSI technology
became ULSI (Ultra Large-Scale Integration) technology, resulting in the production of
microprocessor chips having ten million electronic components. This generation is based on
parallel processing hardware and AI (Artificial Intelligence) software.
AI is an emerging branch in computer science, which interprets the means and method of
making computers think like human beings. All the high-level languages like C and C++,
Java, .Net etc., are used in this generation. They are still in development, though there are
some applications, such as voice recognition.
The goal of fifth-generation computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language
input and are capable of learning and self-organization.
The main features of fifth generation are:
 Availability of very powerful and compact computers at cheaper rates
 More user-friendly interfaces with multimedia features
 Development of Natural language processing
Some computer types of this generation are: Laptop, desktop, Chromebook.

Briefly discuss the technology and programming language used in each

generation.

Programming languages in each generation

A programming language is a formal set of rules and syntax used to communicate instructions
to a computer. Programming languages, like natural language (such as Amharic), are defined
by syntactic and semantic rules which describe their structure and meaning respectively. The
syntax of a language describes the possible combinations of symbols that form a syntactically
correct program. The meaning given to a combination of symbols is handled by semantics.
A programming language also an artificial language that has symbols, tokens and rules of
grammar. The grammatical rules of programming languages are called syntax. It provides a
linguistic framework for describing computations.
Like computers programming languages are also developed through generation and we do
have 5 generations of programming languages. them. The first programming languages were
developed in the 1950s. Thousands of different programming languages have been
developed, used, and discarded. Available programming languages come in a variety of forms
and types. Also, different programming languages are designed for different types of
programs.

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In 1st generation
The language that widely used in this generation is machine language. Machine languages are
low level languages that give all the instruction in binary form (0 &1). A machine instruction
contains two parts: an operation code (op code) and an address. The OP code tells the
microprocessor system what operation it should perform, add, transfer, compare, or move
data to output device, etc. The address identifies location (memory, register) holding the
required operands that is, the data to be operated upon. The address part may contain one,
two or more addresses that are, there may be one (single address), two (double) address, and
three (triple) address instructions.
Machine languages allow the programmer to interact directly with the hardware, and it can
be executed by the computer without the need for a translator. They execute very quickly and
use memory very efficiently. machine language is a lot more difficult to learn than higher
generational programming languages, and it is far more difficult to edit if errors occur. In
addition, if instructions need to be added into memory at some location, then all the
instructions after the insertion point need to be moved down to make room in memory to
accommodate the new instructions. Doing so on a front panel with switches can be very
difficult. When we come to the technology vacuum tubes and magnetic drums for memory
were used.

In 2nd generation
The language used in the second generation of computers was Assembly language. Although
the machine directly could understand the machine languages, it proved too difficult for a
normal human being to remember all the instructions in the form of 0s and 1s. So, another
programming language was needed.
Assembly language is a symbolic representation of machine code, which allows symbolic
designation of memory locations. instead of representing the OP code and the adders as a
binary sequence we can represent them in mnemonics (symbols). An Assembly language is a
programming language which uses mnemonics to write a program. Second-generation
programming languages have the following properties:

 The code can be read and written by a programmer. To run on a computer, it must be
converted into a machine-readable form, a process called assembly.
 The language is specific to a particular processor family and environment.
second-generation languages are sometimes used in kernels and device drivers (though C is
generally employed for this in modern kernels), but more often find use in extremely
intensive processing such as games, video editing, graphic manipulation/rendering. One
method for creating such code is by allowing a compiler to generate a machine-optimized
assembly language version of a particular function. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes,
leading to smaller, more reliable machines.

In 3rd generation
In the 3rd generation of computers high-level languages were used. Even though assembly
languages are more convenient than machine languages, it is slow and bulky as well as
hardware dependent.

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High-level languages are not machine dependent, more flexible and which permit a
programmer to ignore many low-level details of the computer's hardware. Third Generation
programming language uses English like instructions and mathematicians were able to define
variables with statements such as Z = A + B. The use of common words (reserved words)
within instructions makes them easier to learn and understand (Look like English).
All third-generation programming languages are procedural language (i.e. the programmer is
expected to specify what is required and how to perform it). And most of them support structured
programming languages. But Programs written in high level languages need to be translated into machine
language in order to be executed. Examples of high-level languages are C++, FORTRAN, COBL and
BASIC. The introduction of integrated circuits allowed for more sophisticated software development,
enabling structured programming and better memory management. These integrated circuits increased the
efficiency and speed of computers.

In 4th generation
The languages that are used in 4th generation consists of statements that are similar to human languages. 4th
generation languages are commonly used in database programming and scripts. They are designed for special
purpose in mind, such as the development of commercial business software. In the history of computer science
4GL followed the 3GL in an upward trend toward higher abstraction and statement power. These languages
are application-oriented languages.
They are non-procedural languages (i.e. the programmer is not required to write traditional programming
logic). The non-procedural method is easier to write, but you have less control over how each task is actually
performed. In non-procedural languages Programmers concentrate on defining the input and output rather
than the program steps required. Fourth generation languages have a minimum number of syntax rules. This
saves time and free professional programmers for more complex tasks.
Some examples of 4GL are structured query languages (SQL), report generators, application generators and
graphics languages. Microprocessors and personal computers revolutionized computing, making it
accessible to the masses.

In 5th generation
are programming languages that contain visual tools to help develop a program. A good example of a fifth-
generation language is visual basics.
Languages used in these generation are based around solving problems using constraints given to the program,
rather than using an algorithm written by a programmer. Most constraint-based and logical programming
languages and some declarative languages are 5th generation languages.
While 4th generation languages are designed to build specific programs, 5th generation languages are designed
to make the computer solve a given problem without a programmer. This why the programmer only needs to
worry about what problem needed to be solved and what condition needs to be met, without worrying about
how to implement a routine or algorithm to solve them. They are mainly used in AI researches.
5GLs require very powerful hardware and software because of the complexity involved in interpreting
commands in human language.
Generally, these languages focus on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced parallel
processing.

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 Compare and contrast each computer generation.

Features 1st generation 2nd generation 3rd generation 4th generation 5th generation
Period 1940-1956 1956-1963 1964-1971 1971-1980 Present and beyond
(1971-present)
Technology Vacuum tubes Small, cheap, Integrated Very large- Ultra large-scale
as the basic reliable circuits scale integrated integrated circuits
components transistor circuits
for memory
and circuits.
Electric Very high High but lower Further Very low variable, but with a focus
consumption because than 1st because reduced on efficiency
vacuum tubes vacuum tubes (focused on
use a high replaced by speed and
amount of heat transistors accuracy)
Heat generation Generates a lot High but lower moderate low Very low
amount of heat. than 1st
Cost Very costly Still very costly
Costly Cheap Cheap
Input/output Punch cards, Punch cards Keyboards and There are voice, gesture, AI
paper taps and and magnetic monitors many inputs interface and giving
magnetic tap tap and output input and receiving
devices such as output can be done
scanner, easily
keyboard,
monitors,
printers
Storage Even though Magnetic cores Hard disc SSDs: are a Advanced storage
they used as a primary drives: Type of type of data technologies such as
vacuum tubes memory and data storage storage device clouds, quantum storage.
as a memory, magnetic tapes device that use that use flash
their storage and magnetic magnetic memory to
was not that discs as a storage to read store data,
much enough secondary and write which allows
for that time memory digital for faster
information. access and
retrieval
compared to
traditional hard
disk drives.
Reliability Because of Since vacuum Integrated High reliable Very reliable, self-
vacuum tubes tubes were circuits redundant repairing systems
frequently replaced by advanced the system
burned they are transistors, they reliability than
unreliable are more the previous
reliable and two
fewer failure

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Market use Only for Enterprise Cloud Game Data Centres (high
government Storage Services, development, performance computing
and research Solutions, business video editing and cloud storage)
High- education, and home Database Management
Performance Content business
Workstations Creation education

Programming Machine Assembly High level High level Natural languages, AI-
languages language language languages languages (C, based languages
(COBAL and C++)
FORTRAN)
example ENIAC and CDC 1604, Honeywell- PDP 11, Desktop, laptop,
EDVAC UNIVAC 6000, IBM- STAR 1000 Ultrabook
1108 370

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Summary
The computers in recent times have become a relevant tool particularly in the areas of storage
and dissemination of information. They are not created in a day but evolved through time in
various generations. There are many different scientists who contributed a lot for the
evolution of computers by their findings.
Generation in computer terminology is a change in technology a computer is/was being used.
Initially, the generation term was used to distinguish between varying hardware technologies.
Nowadays, generation includes both hardware and software, which together make up an
entire computer system. There are five generation of computers known till date.
Each generations use a different type of programming language. A programming language is a formal
set of rules and syntax used to communicate instructions to a computer. Programming
languages, like natural language (such as Amharic), are defined by syntactic and semantic
rules which describe their structure and meaning respectively.

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References

 https://dspmuranchi.ac.in › pdf › Blog › Computer

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