Introduction To Programming Language

Modern computers are incredibly fast, and getting faster all the time. Yet with this speed comes some significant constraints. Computers only naively understand a very limited set of instructions, and must be told exactly what to do. A program (also commonly called an application or software) is a set of instructions that tells the computer what to do. The physical computer machinery that executes the instructions is the hardware.

Machine language

Machine language is the lowest-level programming language (except for computers that utilize programmable microcode). Machine languages are the only languages understood by computers. While easily understood by computers, machine languages are almost impossible for humans to use because they consist entirely of numbers. programmers, therefore , use either a high-level programming language or an assembly language. An assembly language contains the same instructions as a machine language, but the instructions and variables have names instead of being just numbers.

Assembly language

Because machine language is so hard to program with, assembly language was invented. In an assembly language, each instruction is identified by a short name (rather than a set of bits), and variables can be identified by names rather than numbers. This makes them much easier to read and write. However, the CPU can not understand assembly language directly. Instead, it must be translated into machine language by using an assembler. Assembly languages tend to be very fast, and assembly is still used today when speed is critical. However, the reason assembly language is so fast is because assembly language is tailored to a particular CPU. Assembly programs written for one CPU will not run on another CPU. Furthermore, assembly languages still require a lot of instructions to do even simple tasks, and are not very human readable.

High-level Languages

To address these concerns, high-level programming languages were developed. C, C++, Pascal, Java, Javascript, and Perl, are all high level languages. High level languages allow the programmer to write programs without having to be as concerned about what kind of computer the program is being run on. Programs written in high level languages must be translated into a form that the CPU can understand before they can be executed. There are two primary ways this is done: compiling and interpreting.

A compiler is a program that reads code and produces a stand-alone executable program that the CPU can understand directly. Once your code has been turned into an executable, you do not need the compiler to run the program. Although it may intuitively seem like high-level languages would be significantly less efficient than assembly languages, modern compilers do an excellent job of converting high-level languages into fast executables. Sometimes, they even do a better job than human coders can do in assembly language!

An interpreter is a program that directly executes your code without compiling it into machine code first. Interpreters tend to be more flexible, but are less efficient when running programs because the interpreting process needs to be done every time the program is run. This means the interpreter is needed every time the program is run.

Any language can be compiled or interpreted, however, traditionally languages like C, C++, and Pascal are typically compiled, whereas “scripting” languages like Perl and Javascript are interpreted. Some languages, like Java, use a mix of the two.

High level languages have several desirable properties.

First, high level languages are much easier to read and write.

Second, they require less instructions to perform the same task as lower level languages. In C++ you can do something like a = b * 2 + 5; in one line. In assembly language, this would take 5 or 6 different instructions.

Third, you don’t have to concern yourself with details such as loading variables into CPU registers. The compiler or interpreter takes care of all those details for you.

And fourth, they are portable to different architectures.

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2. Introduction to C/C++ Language.