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INTRODUCTION TO TODAY’S COMPUTERS

A computer is an electronic device used to process information. It is this function of the computer that placed it at the centre of our transition from the industrial period of our society to the informa­tion age. Today, we encounter computers in almost every aspect of society. Computers are highly visible in such professions as education, science, medicine, and business, but they also can be found behind-the-scenes at the grocery store, in our automobiles, microwave ovens, and VCRs.

Computers have evolved through several generations. Each new generation is based on technological innovations and new meth­ods of processing data. The first generation began with the devel­opment of the earliest large mainframe computers. These room-sized computers, such as the UNIVAC 1, were based on electromechanical devices and vacuum-tube technology. Computers based on the transistor, which was invented in the late 1950s, mark the beginning of the second generation of com­puters. Transistors brought about the development of smaller, faster, and more efficient computers.

The third generation of com­puters used integrated circuits that opened the door for the cre­ation of even smaller and faster computers. These smaller computers were known as minicomputers and were the first to incorporate operating systems that automated many of the computer's operational tasks, tasks that had been formerly han­dled by humans.

The fourth generation of computers is character­ized by large-scale integration of computer circuitry and small microprocessors. Microcomputers (also called personal computers or PCs) were based on these microprocessors and they put com­puting power into the hands of individual users. In the future, computers that utilize artificial intelligence technologies will be able to make decisions based on accumulated evidence.

Although the technological innovations that mark the differ­ent generations in the evolution of the computer are general­ly concerned with the central processing capabilities of the computer, a computer system is actually an integrated set of computing components. A computer system requires input de­vices (keyboard, mouse, scanners, etc.) to get information into the computer and output devices (monitor, printer, etc.) to get information out of the computer.

These physical com­ponents of the computer are known as hardware. The set of instructions or programs that are created by programmers to control the computer's response to user input is known as software.

There are several types of software: systems software, which refers to the programs used to operate the computer itself ap­plications software, which refers to

programs used to perform various tasks such as word processing, database management, and record keeping; and programming software, which refers to programs used to create software.

Programming languages have evolved through a series of genera­tions, just as computer hardware has. Machine languages give the programmer precise control over all of the computer’s activities using programming commands that are closely related to hard­ware capabilities. Assembly languages use easier-to-understand code words rather than the binary code used in machine lan­guages. High-level languages, which utilize English-like instruc­tions, made the programming process much easier.

Today, nonprocedural languages, object-oriented languages, and natural-language approaches provide much more flexibility to program­mers by eliminating the need for many of the special syntax rules of earlier languages. Just as the personal computer gave comput­ing power to the individual, today’s new authoring tools are pro­viding a way for nonprogrammers to create their own programs.