3GLs are much more machine independent and more programmer-friendly. This includes features like improved support for aggregate data types, and expressing concepts in a way that favors the programmer, not the computer. A third generation language improves over a second generation language by having the computer take care of non-essential details. 3GLs feature more abstraction than previous generations of languages, and thus can be considered higher level languages than their first and second generation counterparts. First introduced in the late 1950s, Fortran, ALGOL, and COBOL are examples of early 3GLs.
Most popular general-purpose languages today, such as C, C++, C#, Java, BASIC and Pascal, are also third-generation languages