Q.6. What is meant by programming environment?
Related Questions -
Q. What do you mean by programming? (AKTU. 2011 - 12)
Q. Difference between a compiler and loader. (AKTU. 2013 - 14)
Ans. Programming Environment: -
· Programming basically means to provide instructions to underlying machine. Environment means any surrounding which is there.
· So programming environment means all those necessary things hardware/software etc. which are there to facilitate programming. Generally, the various IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) are nothing but the programming environment. But IDEs provide programming environment for High Level Languages only.
· There are three types of Languages i.e. High Level Language, Medium level language and low level language. So there are three types of programming environment for each type of language. These programming environment are discussed below.
1. Programming Environment For Low Level Language: -
Low level language or machine language contains only or and is and is used to directly program the underlying hardware. So the programming environment for low level language contains.
(i) Basic Instruction Set Supported By Underlying Hardware Or Processor: -
It includes fundamental instructions that are hardware or microprogramed on the processor. e.g. add, load, store etc.
(ii) Instruction Format: -
It consists of all valid format in which instructions are given to hardware/processor.
2. Programming Environment For Medium Level Language: -
· Medium level language means assembly language in most cases. An assembly language is made up of mnemonics (m is silent in its pronunciation) mnemonic is a short name given to a basic instruction of processor. e.g. multiply operation is given by mnemoric MUL in most cases, substraction operation is given by SUB in most cases, store operation is given by mnemoric STA.
· Associated with every mnemoric is the opcode. Opcode is actually a numeric code in the form of 0s and 1s which make up an instruction in a low level language. So an assembly language is made up of Mnemonic, opcode for every mnemonic.
Assembler: -
· It is a system software that transformer a program written in assembly language / medium level language into an equivalent program written in a machine language / low level language.
· So, a programming environment for medium level language contains the following :
(i) An Editor with very limited facility.
(ii) An assembler which may or may not have help file attached with it.
Programming Environment For High Level Language: -
Some examples of high level languages are C, C++ and Java. These languages have a large syntax which include diverse types of keywords, statements, operators, punctuations, functions. So programming environment for high level language has a greater number of components as well as they provide much more facilities.
The following are the components of the programming environment for high level language.
(i) Source Editor : The editor on which source code is written.
(ii) Debugging Tools : Tools to help programmer remove error from program.
(iii) Language Translator : They may be compiler, interpreter or both.
Compiler: -
It is a system software which accepts a program written in a high-level language and constructs an equivalent program in low-level language in one go.
Interpreter: -
It is a system software that executes a program written in high level language, line-by-line but it does not create an equivalent low-level program.
(iv) Linker : It is a system software that links one program to another program.
(v) Loader : It is a system software that loads a program into the main-memory.
(vi) Library Files : It is a set of those files that are used to store library functions. Library functions are those functions that are very frequently used in a program. For example, in language C printf ( ), scanf ( ) etc. are library functions and its library file is <stdio.h> which is standard input / output header file.
