Computer Language

Introduction

There are too many languages out there and each has a unique set of advantages. If  people are serious about their career as a programmer, then it’s important to not only know programming languages but also to have some understanding of computer science in general.

History of Computer Language 

The first computer was built in the 1950s, but didn’t have any instructions written in it. Programming was something people did on paper or a computer monitor.

The term computer language has been around since the 1950s. A good example of a long-lived word is “language” which dates back at least to 1841 when it appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary. The term “programming language” was coined in 1965, being an abbreviation for “primitive electronic artificial language.” Computer languages are designed to be easy to learn and use, but they often have complex syntax, as well as a wide range of different control structures (how the code is structured). Languages can vary from simple ones such as BASIC and Pascal (which is why these are so popular) to more complex ones such as C++ and Java, or even more sophisticated ones like Ruby and Python.

Characteristics of Programming Languages

There are several different views of the role of programming languages in computer science. The first is that they are nothing more than tools that programmers use to express their ideas. The second is that they should be considered as “artificial syntax” or “formal semantics”.

The first view, which is a minority opinion, is known as “natural language programming languages” (NLP). It assumes that the programming language only has a semantic role and has no intrinsic power. The second view, which is the majority opinion, is known as “formal languages” or “syntax-semantics programming languages” (TSL). This view assumes that the programming language has an intrinsic power and must be considered as a part of the hardware instead of being merely a tool for programming.

Overview of Computer Language

People often wonder how they could differentiate a person with superior programming skills from others who have relatively inferior computer knowledge. Even though computers are now as common as pencils and paper, that doesn’t mean our computing skills are higher than most folks around us. Once upon a time in history people were taught how to build machines to solve math problems in rigid ways that were neither intuitive nor natural. They learned how to solve problems by working with the abstractions provided by the maths teachers.

It wasn’t until long after computers started getting more and more complicated that they began to truly understand what programming is about. People still have only scratched the surface of what they have built with computer languages, but people have made great strides in understanding what it does and where it came from.

In fact, one of the biggest mistakes people make is confusing computer language for coding (the act of writing code). There are many differences between the two concepts, but let me try to explain some key points:

A code is a series of instructions meant for processing information. For example: “insert their user account name here” means “process information from their user account” while “programming language” means “process information from a program ,” which is another way of saying “create instructions that can be executed by other machines , or programs .”

Coding isn’t simply creating instructions. It involves creating an overall structure for carrying out processes on an individual machine or even an entire network .

Code is usually made up of symbols or characters that don’t necessarily represent data or instructions. The number one mistake people make when learning programming languages is thinking they know everything there is to know about them but not understanding exactly what makes them different from other programming languages.

Computer Programming Languages

Being a programmer isn’t about knowing all the computer languages, but about being able to use them.

The true programming language list is long, and almost certainly not exhaustive. But here are a few that people can use to get started with programming: 

• Python, JavaScript, C/C++/C#, PHP
• HTML/XML/CSS
• SQL
• JavaScript
• Ruby (Ruby on Rails)
• PHP (PHP 4 & 5)

Conclusion 

One  thing is that even though there are all sorts of different ways to solve the same problem in a computer language, people usually think of them as the same thing, but they aren’t. This is one reason why programming languages are so hard to learn — it’s like asking what music can you make by using only the notes on this page as their instrument. Programming is a whole universe in itself.