Which of the following is not a third generation language?

Programming languages are classified into generations based on how close they are to the hardware and how much they resemble human language. Third generation languages are high-level languages that use English-like statements and are largely independent of any particular machine. FORTRAN, COBOL, and Basic all fit this description, being designed for scientific, business, and general-purpose programming respectively using readable syntax.

Assembly language belongs to the second generation. It uses mnemonic codes such as ADD or MOV that map closely to a specific processor's machine instructions, which means a program written in assembly language for one type of processor generally will not run on another. This close tie to hardware, rather than English-like structure, places it a generation below FORTRAN, COBOL, and Basic.

When classifying a language by generation, check whether it is written in processor-specific mnemonics (second generation) or in portable, English-like statements (third generation).