Programming language

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Revision as of 19:19, 26 February 2007 by imported>Markus Baumeister (and again)
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Programming Language

A programming language is a way to translate in a reproducible way actions from the programmer into a code the central processing unit CPU can understand and execute. Normally it exists of a series of data definitions combined with logic applied to these data. Generally a computer language reflects the state of development of the hardware and its processing power.

Programming languages can generally be divided into two categories:

Compiled languages must first be translated by a compiler from human readable source code to an intermediate object code. A linker then assembles the object code into executable code that the computer can run.

Interpreted languages rely on a middle-ware application that translates the source into machine code through pre-existing interfaces. For example, an interpreter would read a line such as this: PRINT "Cookies are yummy!" and call the predefined, platform independent function PRINT inside the interpreter itself where the interpreter then executes the platform dependent function call.

All items come with a short description and a typical way to use the language.