First Generation of Languages [Machine Language]

Machine language is considered to be the First generation of Language. Each computer has its own machine language that is the only language understood through the computer.   Initially, programs were written in the machine language. The Machine language instructions are represented through binary numbers for example sequences consisting of 0’s and 1’s.

For instance:  001010001110

could describe a 12-bit machine language instruction. This instruction is separated into two categories, an operation code or op code and an operand for example:

 The Op code specifies the operation like add, multiply, move… and the operand is the address of the data item which is to be operated on. In addition remembering the dozens of code numbers for the operations and the programmer also has to keep track of the addresses of all the data items. Therefore programming in machine language is highly complicated and subject to error. In addition the  program  is  machine  dependent, for example  good  only  for  a  particular machine  because variant computers uses variant machine languages.