What is a programming language? [duplicate]

Answer 1

High level languages were invented so you wouldn't have to mess around with patch panels and cords anymore. Think of them as levels of abstraction between the hardware and the human instructor.

I use the term "high level language" to describe one that uses a parser, an abstract syntax tree, and a code generator to to translate its constructs into "low level" machine instructions.

I deliberately made "levels" plural because we have an increasing number of abstractions between us and hardware now: networking stack, operating systems, application servers, browsers, etc.

Answer 2

The first requirement is intent: a programming language is a language intended for computer programming. Note that this is not quite a tautology; recall that it is possible to program a computer by setting the bits by hand.... Anyway, all the other attributes of a programming language follow from its intent.

I do think a "real" programming language should be Turing-complete. This excludes things like HTML, which direct computers and are called languages, but which are not programming languages.

With any classification, you will get boundary cases; e.g., didn't APL start out as a mathematical notation? However, I think that returning to intent will get you as close as you're likely to get: for those boundary cases, the interesting questions are less relevant to the classification, anyway.

Edit: so, as an aphorism, then:

A programming language is a language intended or used for programming computers.

A real programming language is also Turing-complete.

Answer 3

programming language: a language used to control a computer

Answer 4

A programming language is a grammar describing what sequence of characters is a valid program, paired with a semantics defining what a valid program should cause the computer to do when executed.

Answer 5

Programming language is way to express commands and orders to specific actors.

Programming language consists of a notation and a set of rules, either expressed or implied, such that any actor that executes a program will not violate the rules.

I disagree that programming language has

• anything to do with computations--see Logo
• anything to do with computers--see any cookbook
• anything to do with humans as a source of a program--see compiler that yields assembly
• is just a way to encode/decode information--there's a plenty of stuff that do the same, but they're not P.A.

Answer 6

It is the best way to represent a logic, in a way that is close to the human language.