Programming Languages

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

A programming language is a language specifically designed to express computations that can be performed by the computer. Programming languages are used to create programs that control the behaviour of a system, to express algorithms, or as a mode of human-computer communication.

Usually, programming languages have a vocabulary of syntax and semantics for instructing a computer to perform specific tasks. The term programming language usually refers to high-level languages, such as BASIC, C, C++, COBOL, FORTRAN, Ada, and Pascal to name a few. Each of these languages has a unique set of keywords (words that it understands) and a special syntax for organizing program instructions.

While high-level programming languages are easy for humans to read and understand, the computer actually understands the machine language that consists of numbers only. Each type of CPU has its own unique machine language.

In between the machine languages and high-level languages, there is another type of language known as assembly language. Assembly languages are similar to machine languages, but they are much easier to program because they allow a programmer to substitute names for numbers.

However, irrespective of what language the programmer uses, the program written using any programming language has to be converted into machine language so that the computer can understand it. There are two ways to do this: compile the program or interpret the program

The question of which language is the best depends on the following factors:

• The type of computer on which the program has to be executed

• The type of program

• The expertise of the programmer