0. Introduction

All computers work using a language called machine language. These machine language instructions are etched into computer chips.The instructions of the machine language consists of zeros and ones as the computer understands only binary(0,1). These binary instructions are very cumbersome and difficult to remember.

Scientists created what is called an ASSEMBLER language which has simple English equivalents to binary instructions, like ADD to add two numbers or SUM to sum two numbers. They designed what is called a translator which converts these instructions into binary computer instructions.And the computer will do whatever we want by executing these machine instructions. Still it is difficult to write instructions step by step in assembler.

To make languages much more friendlier using common day today English words, scientists started incorporating their laboratory lingo into computer languages and created translators to convert these instructions into binary machine language. The translator is called a COMPILER. This is the origin of higher level languages.First language designed with this concept is FORTRAN which stands for formula translation. If you write instructions in FORTRAN, like a=b+c etc, the translator translates these instructions into machine language instructions which the computer executes. The set of instructions we write in the language is called a computer program.The art of writing these instructions is called programming.

Many higher languages were developed after FORTRAN. COBOL for Business people,SPSS for statisticians,GRAPHICS to manipulate pictures on the crt screen etc. As the demand for computer processing grew, the need for people to write instructions in various languages grew. These people are called programmers and the need of programmers became acute as computers became work horses, doing routine work.

Pascal is a language developed to teach students various complexities in programming for the computers. Once you have the basics you can adopt them to any language you choose depending upon your profession.