The programming language generations

Generation languages were used to classify the difficulty of understanding of the language. The newer generations of languages have become very simple and easy to understand

1st generation language 

Is the machine language which consist of 0s and 1s, which gives instruction to work on for hardwares such as processors.

2nd generation language 

Also called assembly language which converts the statements into machine language

e.g

ADD 9,16

3rd generation language 

This generation is the "high level" programming language, such as Java , C or C++

A compiler will change this type of language to machine ones.This generation needs a  decent amount of  knowledge in programming.
credits;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_generations
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/programming-language-generations

4th generation language 

This generation looks more familiar to natural languages and is used for databases.

e.g

EXTRACT ALL CUSTOMERS WHERE "PREVIOUS PURCHASES" TOTAL MORE THAN $1000

5th generation language 

Uses visual interface to create source language that is usually compiles with 3GL or 4GL. Microsoft uses 5gl languages to visualize .eg C#