The idea of programming language generations were based on paradigms of programming that never really caught on. The idea, roughly, is that 3GL are those languages where you specify how something is to be done, 4GL is where you specify what is to be done instead, and 5GL is you specify the problem and the computer does everything for you.

This breaks down with the fact that it's really difficult, outside of really constrained spaces, to turn a "what" specification into a high-performance implementation, so any practical language needs to let you give some degree of control in the "how", and as a result, any modern language is somewhere uncomfortably between the 3GL and 4GL in the paradigm, not fitting entirely well in either category.

third generation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-generation_programming_l...

The modern analogue of 4GLs would be the promise of LLMs letting you write prompts so you don't have to learn a programming language; the promise of the original 4GLs like Pearl (not to be confused with perl) and Objectstar was to let you have non-programmers writing business logic without being COBOL or FORTRAN programmers.

They haven’t been around long enough to even be considered in the running.