Justine Santos

BSCS 3B

What is programming language?

For us to understand the meaning of a programming language. A programming
language is a language used by application software developers to create instructions
for the computer to use to run the application software. These instructions are typically
referred to as code, and the developers use specific syntax and structures to write the
code that the computer can understand and execute. The programming language
allows developers to create software applications that can perform a wide variety of
functions, from simple calculations to complex data analysis and manipulation.
Furthermore, these are the types of programming languages, first is low-level
languages include assembly and machine languages. An assembly language contains a
list of basic instructions and is much harder to read than a high-level language. It is just
one level above machine code in terms of abstraction, using simple codes that are
easily converted to strings of 1s and 0s (binary representation). It cannot be used to
structure and manipulate complex information. Machine language is directly understood
by the computer’s processing unit. A programmer will first write his code in a high-level
language, then compile it into a machine-readable format where instructions are
represented in binary.

While high-level languages are designed to be easy to read and understood,

allowing programmers to write source code using logical, meaningful words and
symbols. They encapsulate everything from early algorithmic languages such as
FORTRAN to more widespread, object-oriented languages like C++, C#, and Java.