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Hmm. I was introduced to the term 3GL to mean languages such as ALGOL, PL/1, Fortran, Pascal, C, and so on. Substantially more structured or English-like than assembler. Most definitions say they take care of details unnecessary to writing the programming logic.

So, I just looked up the wikipedia article to find the same languages but also that anything above assembler is technically a 3GL. Even HLA is a 3GL by that standard. So, Forth is... at the lowest rung... a 3GL. By that standard, so are macro-assemblers with control flow and typing constructs. Personally, I think that definition is crap and we should reserve 3GL for languages that significantly raised abstraction like those I cited.

This is just a matter of opinion, though. Each will see it a different way and there's no right answer. That's what I've learned researching after your comment.



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