Programming Languages

Programming languages are the basic building blocks for all software, allowing people to tell computers what to do and the means by which software are developed. A programming language or computer language is a standardized communication technique for expressing instructions to a computer. To communicate with computer, we need to use language which computer can understand and process i.e. programs should be written in computer understandable languages called programming languages. Programming language consists of a set of characters, symbols and set of rules known as syntax rule. Programmer has to follow all specified rules strictly to get desired results. In general, programming language is a set of syntactic and semantic rules used to define computer programs.

Programming languages are generally classified in two categories; they are Low Level Language & High Level Language.

A low level language is a programming language that is much closer to the hardware. It requires a thorough knowledge of the hardware for which the program is being created. It can be divided into two types, Machine Language and Assembly Language.

High Level Language is much closer to human language so it is more suitable to write code in high level language. It is more or less independent of the particular type of computer used. And, High level language are classified in two broad categories; they are procedure oriented programming language and object oriented programming language.

See the classification trees for programming languages below: