Programming languages for fifth generation computers

Abstract Fifth Generation languages and computers, for use in the 1990's, may be based on significantly different concepts than traditional computing. There are four major categories of computing, each consisting of a programming style and corresponding computer. These are: procedural languages (and control flow computers); object-oriented languages (and actor computers); functional languages (and data flow or reduction computers); and logic languages (and logic computers). In the future any of these categories of languages may become “main-stream” programming styles. In this paper we briefly present these novel programming languages and examine their advantages and disadvantages for programming.