Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Programming language
A programming language is an
engineered language for expressing
[1]
computer programs, typically allowing
software to be written in a human readable
manner.

Execution of a program requires an

implementation. There are two main
approaches for implementing a
programming language – compilation,
where programs are compiled ahead-of-time
to machine code, and interpretation, where
programs are directly executed. In addition
to these two extremes, some
implementations use hybrid approaches The source code for a computer program in C. The
such as just-in-time compilation and gray lines are comments that explain the program to
humans. When compiled and run, it will give the output
bytecode interpreters.[2]
"Hello, world!".

The design of programming languages has

been strongly influenced by computer architecture, with most imperative languages designed
around the ubiquitous von Neumann architecture.[3] While early programming languages were
closely tied to the hardware, modern languages often hide hardware details via abstraction in an
effort to enable better software with less effort. These languages are known as high-level
languages.[4]

Relation to natural languages

Programming languages have some similarity to natural languages in that they can allow
communication of ideas between people. That is, programs are generally human-readable and
can express complex ideas. However, the kinds of ideas that programming languages can
express are ultimately limited to the domain of computation.[5]

The term computer language is sometimes used interchangeably with programming

language[6] but some contend they are different concepts. Some contend that programming
languages are a subset of computer languages.[7] Some use computer language to classify a
language used in computing that is not considered a programming language. Some regard a

[Link] Page 1 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

programming language as a theoretical construct for programming an abstract machine, and a

computer language as the subset thereof that runs on a physical computer, which has finite
hardware resources.[8]

John C. Reynolds emphasizes that a formal specification language is a programming language

as much as any language intended for execution. He argues that textual and even graphical
input formats that affect the behavior of a computer are programming languages, despite the
fact they are commonly not Turing-complete, and remarks that ignorance of programming
language concepts is the reason for many flaws in input formats.[9]

History

Early developments
The first programmable computers were invented during the 1940s, and with them, the first
programming languages. [10][11] The earliest computers were programmed in first-generation
programming languages (1GLs), machine language (simple instructions that could be directly
executed by the processor). This code was very difficult to debug and was not portable between
different computer systems.[12] In order to improve the ease of programming, assembly
languages (or second-generation programming languages—2GLs) were invented, diverging
from the machine language to make programs easier to understand for humans, although they
did not increase portability.[13]

Initially, hardware resources were scarce and expensive, while human resources were cheaper.
Therefore, cumbersome languages that were time-consuming to use, but were closer to the
hardware for higher efficiency were favored.[14] The introduction of high-level programming
languages (third-generation programming languages—3GLs)—revolutionized programming.
These languages abstracted away the details of the hardware, instead being designed to express
algorithms that could be understood more easily by humans. For example, arithmetic
expressions could now be written in symbolic notation and later translated into machine code
that the hardware could execute.[13] In 1957, Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) was invented.
Often considered the first compiled high-level programming language,[13][15] Fortran has
remained in use into the twenty-first century.[16]

1960s and 1970s

Around 1960, the first mainframes—general purpose computers—were developed, although
they could only be operated by professionals and the cost was extreme. The data and
instructions were input by punch cards, meaning that no input could be added while the
program was running. The languages developed at this time therefore are designed for minimal

[Link] Page 2 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

interaction.[18] After the invention of the

microprocessor, computers in the 1970s became
dramatically cheaper.[19] New computers also allowed
more user interaction, which was supported by newer
programming languages.[20]

Lisp, implemented in 1958, was the first functional

programming language.[21] Unlike Fortran, it supported
recursion and conditional expressions,[22] and it also
introduced dynamic memory management on a heap
and automatic garbage collection.[23] For the next
decades, Lisp dominated artificial intelligence
applications.[24] In 1978, another functional language,
ML, introduced inferred types and polymorphic
parameters.[20][25]

After ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language) was released in

Two people using an IBM 704
1958 and 1960,[26] it became the standard in computing
mainframe—the first hardware to support
literature for describing algorithms. Although its floating-point arithmetic—in 1957. Fortran
commercial success was limited, most popular was designed for this machine.[17][16]
imperative languages—including C, Pascal, Ada, C++,
Java, and C#—are directly or indirectly descended from
ALGOL 60.[27][16] Among its innovations adopted by later programming languages included
greater portability and the first use of context-free, BNF grammar.[28] Simula, the first language
to support object-oriented programming (including subtypes, dynamic dispatch, and
inheritance), also descends from ALGOL and achieved commercial success.[29] C, another
ALGOL descendant, has sustained popularity into the twenty-first century. C allows access to
lower-level machine operations than other contemporary languages. Its power and efficiency,
generated in part with flexible pointer operations, comes at the cost of making it more difficult
to write correct code.[20]

Prolog, designed in 1972, was the first logic programming language, communicating with a
computer using formal logic notation.[30][31] With logic programming, the programmer
specifies a desired result and allows the interpreter to decide how to achieve it.[32][31]

1980s to 2000s
During the 1980s, the invention of the personal computer transformed the roles for which
programming languages were used.[33] New languages introduced in the 1980s included C++, a
superset of C that can compile C programs but also supports classes and inheritance.[34] Ada
and other new languages introduced support for concurrency.[35] The Japanese government
invested heavily into the so-called fifth-generation languages that added support for
concurrency to logic programming constructs, but these languages were outperformed by other
concurrency-supporting languages.[36][37]

[Link] Page 3 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Due to the rapid growth of the Internet and the World

Wide Web in the 1990s, new programming languages
were introduced to support web pages and networking.
[38]
Java, based on C++ and designed for increased
portability across systems and security, enjoyed large-
scale success because these features are essential for
many Internet applications.[39][40] Another
development was that of dynamically typed scripting
languages—Python, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby—
designed to quickly produce small programs that
coordinate existing applications. Due to their
integration with HTML, they have also been used for
building web pages hosted on servers.[41][42]

2000s to present
During the 2000s, there was a slowdown in the
development of new programming languages that
achieved widespread popularity.[43] One innovation was
service-oriented programming, designed to exploit
distributed computing systems which components are
connected by a network. Services are similar to objects
in object-oriented programming, but run on a separate
process.[44] C# and F# cross-pollinated ideas between
A small selection of programming
imperative and functional programming.[45] After 2010,
language textbooks
several new languages—Rust, Go, Swift, Zig, and Carbon
—competed for the performance-critical software for
which C had historically been used.[46] Most of the new programming languages use static
typing while a few numbers of new languages use dynamic typing like Julia.[47]

Some of the new programming languages are classified as visual programming languages like
Scratch and LabVIEW. Also, some of these languages mix between textual and visual
programming usage like Ballerina.[48][49][50] Also, this trend lead to developing projects that
help in developing new visual languages like Blockly by Google.[51] Many game engines like
Unreal and Unity support visual scripting.[52][53]

Definition
A language can be defined in terms of syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), and often is
defined via a formal language specification.

Syntax
[Link] Page 4 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

A programming language's surface

form is known as its syntax. Most
programming languages are purely
textual; they use sequences of text
including words, numbers, and
punctuation, much like written natural
languages. In contrast, some
programming languages are graphical,
using visual relationships between
symbols to specify a program.

The syntax of a language describes the

possible combinations of symbols that
form a syntactically correct program.
The meaning given to a combination of Parse tree of Python code with inset tokenization
symbols is handled by semantics
(either formal or hard-coded in a
reference implementation). Since most languages
are textual, this article discusses textual syntax.

The programming language syntax is usually

defined using a combination of regular
expressions (for lexical structure) and Backus–
Naur form (for grammatical structure). Below is a
simple grammar, based on Lisp:

expression ::= atom | list

atom ::= number | symbol
number ::= [+-]?['0'-'9']+
symbol ::= ['A'-'Z''a'-'z'].* Syntax highlighting is often used to aid
list ::= '(' expression* ')' programmers in recognizing elements of source
code. The language above is Python.
This grammar specifies the following:

an expression is either an atom or a list;

an atom is either a number or a symbol;
a number is an unbroken sequence of one or more decimal digits, optionally preceded by a
plus or minus sign;
a symbol is a letter followed by zero or more of any alphabetical characters (excluding
whitespace); and
a list is a matched pair of parentheses, with zero or more expressions inside it.
The following are examples of well-formed token sequences in this grammar: 12345, () and (a
b c232 (1)).

[Link] Page 5 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Not all syntactically correct programs are semantically correct. Many syntactically correct
programs are nonetheless ill-formed, per the language's rules, and may (depending on the
language specification and the soundness of the implementation) result in an error on
translation or execution. In some cases, such programs may exhibit undefined behavior. Even
when a program is well-defined within a language, it may still have a meaning that is not
intended by the person who wrote it.

Using natural language as an example, it may not be possible to assign a meaning to a

grammatically correct sentence or the sentence may be false:

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," is grammatically well-formed but has no generally
accepted meaning.
"John is a married bachelor," is grammatically well-formed but expresses a meaning that
cannot be true.
The following C language fragment is syntactically correct, but performs operations that are not
semantically defined (the operation *p >> 4 has no meaning for a value having a complex type
and p->im is not defined because the value of p is the null pointer):

complex *p = NULL;
complex abs_p = sqrt(*p >> 4 + p->im);

If the type declaration on the first line were omitted, the program would trigger an error on the
undefined variable p during compilation. However, the program would still be syntactically
correct since type declarations provide only semantic information.

The grammar needed to specify a programming language can be classified by its position in the
Chomsky hierarchy. The syntax of most programming languages can be specified using a Type-2
grammar, i.e., they are context-free grammars.[54] Some languages, including Perl and Lisp,
contain constructs that allow execution during the parsing phase. Languages that have
constructs that allow the programmer to alter the behavior of the parser make syntax analysis
an undecidable problem, and generally blur the distinction between parsing and execution.[55]
In contrast to Lisp's macro system and Perl's BEGIN blocks, which may contain general
computations, C macros are merely string replacements and do not require code execution.[56]

Semantics
Semantics refers to the meaning of content that conforms to a language's syntax.

Static semantics
Static semantics defines restrictions on the structure of valid texts that are hard or impossible to
express in standard syntactic formalisms.[57] For compiled languages, static semantics
essentially include those semantic rules that can be checked at compile time. Examples include
checking that every identifier is declared before it is used (in languages that require such

[Link] Page 6 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

declarations) or that the labels on the arms of a case statement are distinct.[58] Many important
restrictions of this type, like checking that identifiers are used in the appropriate context (e.g.
not adding an integer to a function name), or that subroutine calls have the appropriate number
and type of arguments, can be enforced by defining them as rules in a logic called a type system.
Other forms of static analyses like data flow analysis may also be part of static semantics.
Programming languages such as Java and C# have definite assignment analysis, a form of data
flow analysis, as part of their respective static semantics.[59]

Dynamic semantics
Once data has been specified, the machine must be instructed to perform operations on the
data. For example, the semantics may define the strategy by which expressions are evaluated to
values, or the manner in which control structures conditionally execute statements. The
dynamic semantics (also known as execution semantics) of a language defines how and when
the various constructs of a language should produce a program behavior. There are many ways
of defining execution semantics. Natural language is often used to specify the execution
semantics of languages commonly used in practice. A significant amount of academic research
goes into formal semantics of programming languages, which allows execution semantics to be
specified in a formal manner. Results from this field of research have seen limited application to
programming language design and implementation outside academia.[59]

Features
A language provides features for a programmer to develop software. Some notable features are
described below.

Type system
A data type is a set of allowable values and operations that can be performed on these values.
[60] Each programming language's type system defines which data types exist, the type of an

expression, and how type equivalence and type compatibility function in the language.[61]

According to type theory, a language is fully typed if the specification of every operation defines
types of data to which the operation is applicable.[62] In contrast, an untyped language, such as
most assembly languages, allows any operation to be performed on any data, generally
sequences of bits of various lengths.[62] In practice, while few languages are fully typed, most
offer a degree of typing.[62]

Because different types (such as integers and floats) represent values differently, unexpected
results will occur if one type is used when another is expected. Type checking will flag this error,
usually at compile time (runtime type checking is more costly).[63] With strong typing, type
errors can always be detected unless variables are explicitly cast to a different type. Weak typing

[Link] Page 7 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

occurs when languages allow implicit casting—for example, to enable operations between
variables of different types without the programmer making an explicit type conversion. The
more cases in which this type coercion is allowed, the fewer type errors can be detected.[64]

Commonly supported types

Early programming languages often supported only built-in, numeric types such as the integer
(signed and unsigned) and floating point (to support operations on real numbers that are not
integers). Most programming languages support multiple sizes of floats (often called float and
double) and integers depending on the size and precision required by the programmer. Storing
an integer in a type that is too small to represent it leads to integer overflow. The most common
way of representing negative numbers with signed types is twos complement, although ones
complement is also used.[65] Other common types include Boolean—which is either true or false
—and character—traditionally one byte, sufficient to represent all ASCII characters.[66]

Arrays are a data type whose elements, in many languages, must consist of a single type of fixed
length. Other languages define arrays as references to data stored elsewhere and support
elements of varying types.[67] Depending on the programming language, sequences of multiple
characters, called strings, may be supported as arrays of characters or their own primitive type.
[68] Strings may be of fixed or variable length, which enables greater flexibility at the cost of

increased storage space and more complexity.[69] Other data types that may be supported
include lists,[70] associative (unordered) arrays accessed via keys,[71] records in which data is
mapped to names in an ordered structure,[72] and tuples—similar to records but without names
for data fields.[73] Pointers store memory addresses, typically referencing locations on the heap
where other data is stored.[74]

The simplest user-defined type is an ordinal type, often called an enumeration, whose values
can be mapped onto the set of positive integers.[75] Since the mid-1980s, most programming
languages also support abstract data types, in which the representation of the data and
operations are hidden from the user, who can only access an interface.[76] The benefits of data
abstraction can include increased reliability, reduced complexity, less potential for name
collision, and allowing the underlying data structure to be changed without the client needing to
alter its code.[77]

Static and dynamic typing

In static typing, all expressions have their types determined before a program executes, typically
at compile-time.[62] Most widely used, statically typed programming languages require the
types of variables to be specified explicitly. In some languages, types are implicit; one form of
this is when the compiler can infer types based on context. The downside of implicit typing is
the potential for errors to go undetected.[78] Complete type inference has traditionally been
associated with functional languages such as Haskell and ML.[79]

[Link] Page 8 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

With dynamic typing, the type is not attached to the variable but only the value encoded in it. A
single variable can be reused for a value of a different type. Although this provides more
flexibility to the programmer, it is at the cost of lower reliability and less ability for the
programming language to check for errors.[80] Some languages allow variables of a union type
to which any type of value can be assigned, in an exception to their usual static typing rules.[81]

Concurrency
In computing, multiple instructions can be executed simultaneously. Many programming
languages support instruction-level and subprogram-level concurrency.[82] By the twenty-first
century, additional processing power on computers was increasingly coming from the use of
additional processors, which requires programmers to design software that makes use of
multiple processors simultaneously to achieve improved performance.[83] Interpreted
languages such as Python and Ruby do not support the concurrent use of multiple processors.
[84] Other programming languages do support managing data shared between different threads

by controlling the order of execution of key instructions via the use of semaphores, controlling
access to shared data via monitor, or enabling message passing between threads.[85]

Exception handling
Many programming languages include exception handlers, a section of code triggered by
runtime errors that can deal with them in two main ways:[86]

Termination: shutting down and handing over control to the operating system. This option is
considered the simplest.
Resumption: resuming the program near where the exception occurred. This can trigger a
repeat of the exception, unless the exception handler is able to modify values to prevent the
exception from reoccurring.
Some programming languages support dedicating a block of code to run regardless of whether
an exception occurs before the code is reached; this is called finalization.[87]

There is a tradeoff between increased ability to handle exceptions and reduced performance.[88]
For example, even though array index errors are common[89] C does not check them for
performance reasons.[88] Although programmers can write code to catch user-defined
exceptions, this can clutter a program. Standard libraries in some languages, such as C, use
their return values to indicate an exception.[90] Some languages and their compilers have the
option of turning on and off error handling capability, either temporarily or permanently.[91]

Design and implementation

One of the most important influences on programming language design has been computer
architecture. Imperative languages, the most commonly used type, were designed to perform
well on von Neumann architecture, the most common digital computer architecture.[92] In von

[Link] Page 9 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Neumann architecture, the memory stores both data and instructions, while the CPU that
performs instructions on data is separate, and data must be piped back and forth to the CPU.
The central elements in these languages are variables, assignment, and iteration, which is more
efficient than recursion on these machines.[93]

Many programming languages have been designed from scratch, altered to meet new needs, and
combined with other languages. Many have eventually fallen into disuse. The birth of
programming languages in the 1950s was stimulated by the desire to make a universal
programming language suitable for all machines and uses, avoiding the need to write code for
different computers.[94] By the early 1960s, the idea of a universal language was rejected due to
the differing requirements of the variety of purposes for which code was written.[95]

Tradeoffs
Desirable qualities of programming languages include readability, writability, and reliability.[96]
These features can reduce the cost of training programmers in a language, the amount of time
needed to write and maintain programs in the language, the cost of compiling the code, and
increase runtime performance.[97]

Although early programming languages often prioritized efficiency over readability, the latter
has grown in importance since the 1970s. Having multiple operations to achieve the same
result can be detrimental to readability, as is overloading operators, so that the same
operator can have multiple meanings.[98] Another feature important to readability is
orthogonality, limiting the number of constructs that a programmer has to learn.[99] A syntax
structure that is easily understood and special words that are immediately obvious also
supports readability.[100]
Writability is the ease of use for writing code to solve the desired problem. Along with the
same features essential for readability,[101] abstraction—interfaces that enable hiding details
from the client—and expressivity—enabling more concise programs—additionally help the
programmer write code.[102] The earliest programming languages were tied very closely to
the underlying hardware of the computer, but over time support for abstraction has
increased, allowing programmers to express ideas that are more remote from simple
translation into underlying hardware instructions. Because programmers are less tied to the
complexity of the computer, their programs can do more computing with less effort from the
programmer.[103] Most programming languages come with a standard library of commonly
used functions.[104]
Reliability means that a program performs as specified in a wide range of circumstances.
[105]
Type checking, exception handling, and restricted aliasing (multiple variable names
accessing the same region of memory) all can improve a program's reliability.[106]
Programming language design often involves tradeoffs.[107] For example, features to improve
reliability typically come at the cost of performance.[108] Increased expressivity due to a large
number of operators makes writing code easier but comes at the cost of readability.[108]

[Link] Page 10 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Natural-language programming has been proposed as a way to eliminate the need for a
specialized language for programming. However, this goal remains distant and its benefits are
open to debate. Edsger W. Dijkstra took the position that the use of a formal language is
essential to prevent the introduction of meaningless constructs.[109] Alan Perlis was similarly
dismissive of the idea.[110]

Specification
The specification of a programming language is an artifact that the language users and the
implementors can use to agree upon whether a piece of source code is a valid program in that
language, and if so what its behavior shall be.

A programming language specification can take several forms, including the following:

An explicit definition of the syntax, static semantics, and execution semantics of the
language. While syntax is commonly specified using a formal grammar, semantic definitions
may be written in natural language (e.g., as in the C language), or a formal semantics (e.g.,
as in Standard ML[111] and Scheme[112] specifications).
A description of the behavior of a translator for the language (e.g., the C++ and Fortran
specifications). The syntax and semantics of the language have to be inferred from this
description, which may be written in natural or formal language.
A reference or model implementation, sometimes written in the language being specified
(e.g., Prolog or ANSI REXX[113]). The syntax and semantics of the language are explicit in
the behavior of the reference implementation.

Implementation
An implementation of a programming language is the conversion of a program into machine
code that can be executed by the hardware. The machine code then can be executed with the
help of the operating system.[114] The most common form of interpretation in production code
is by a compiler, which translates the source code via an intermediate-level language into
machine code, known as an executable. Once the program is compiled, it will run more quickly
than with other implementation methods.[115] Some compilers are able to provide further
optimization to reduce memory or computation usage when the executable runs, but increasing
compilation time.[116]

Another implementation method is to run the program with an interpreter, which translates
each line of software into machine code just before it executes. Although it can make debugging
easier, the downside of interpretation is that it runs 10 to 100 times slower than a compiled
executable.[117] Hybrid interpretation methods provide some of the benefits of compilation and
some of the benefits of interpretation via partial compilation. One form this takes is just-in-time
compilation, in which the software is compiled ahead of time into an intermediate language,
and then into machine code immediately before execution.[118]

[Link] Page 11 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Proprietary languages
Although most of the most commonly used programming languages have fully open
specifications and implementations, many programming languages exist only as proprietary
programming languages with the implementation available only from a single vendor, which
may claim that such a proprietary language is their intellectual property. Proprietary
programming languages are commonly domain-specific languages or internal scripting
languages for a single product; some proprietary languages are used only internally within a
vendor, while others are available to external users.

Some programming languages exist on the border between proprietary and open; for example,
Oracle Corporation asserts proprietary rights to some aspects of the Java programming
language,[119] and Microsoft's C# programming language, which has open implementations of
most parts of the system, also has Common Language Runtime (CLR) as a closed environment.
[120]

Many proprietary languages are widely used, in spite of their proprietary nature; examples
include MATLAB, VBScript, and Wolfram Language. Some languages may make the transition
from closed to open; for example, Erlang was originally Ericsson's internal programming
language.[121]

Open source programming languages are particularly helpful for open science applications,
enhancing the capacity for replication and code sharing.[122]

Use
Thousands of different programming languages have been created, mainly in the computing
field.[123] Individual software projects commonly use five programming languages or more.[124]

Programming languages differ from most other forms of human expression in that they require
a greater degree of precision and completeness. When using a natural language to communicate
with other people, human authors and speakers can be ambiguous and make small errors, and
still expect their intent to be understood. However, figuratively speaking, computers "do exactly
what they are told to do", and cannot "understand" what code the programmer intended to
write. The combination of the language definition, a program, and the program's inputs must
fully specify the external behavior that occurs when the program is executed, within the domain
of control of that program. In contrast, ideas about an algorithm can be communicated to
humans without the precision needed for execution by using pseudocode, which interleaves
natural language with code written in a programming language.

[Link] Page 12 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

A programming language provides a structured mechanism for defining pieces of data, and the
operations or transformations that may be carried out automatically on that data. A
programmer uses the abstractions present in the language to represent the concepts involved in
a computation. These concepts are represented as a collection of the simplest elements available
(called primitives).[125] Programming is the process by which programmers combine these
primitives to compose new programs, or adapt existing ones to new uses or a changing
environment.

Programs for a computer might be executed in a batch process without any human interaction,
or a user might type commands in an interactive session of an interpreter. In this case the
"commands" are simply programs, whose execution is chained together. When a language can
run its commands through an interpreter (such as a Unix shell or other command-line
interface), without compiling, it is called a scripting language.[126]

Measuring language usage

Determining which is the most widely used programming language is difficult since the
definition of usage varies by context. One language may occupy the greater number of
programmer hours, a different one has more lines of code, and a third may consume the most
CPU time. Some languages are very popular for particular kinds of applications. For example,
COBOL is still strong in the corporate data center, often on large mainframes;[127][128] Fortran
in scientific and engineering applications; Ada in aerospace, transportation, military, real-time,
and embedded applications; and C in embedded applications and operating systems. Other
languages are regularly used to write many different kinds of applications.

Various methods of measuring language popularity, each subject to a different bias over what is
measured, have been proposed:

counting the number of job advertisements that mention the language[129]

the number of books sold that teach or describe the language[130]
estimates of the number of existing lines of code written in the language – which may
underestimate languages not often found in public searches[131]
counts of language references (i.e., to the name of the language) found using a web search
engine.
Combining and averaging information from various internet sites, [Link] reported the ten
most popular programming languages (in descending order by overall popularity): Java, C,
C++, Python, C#, JavaScript, VB .NET, R, PHP, and MATLAB.[132]

As of June 2024, the top five programming languages as measured by TIOBE index are Python,
C++, C, Java and C#. TIOBE provides a list of the top 100 programming languages according to
their index and updates this list every month.[133]

[Link] Page 13 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

According to IEEE Spectrum staff, today's most popular programming languages may remain
dominant because of how AI works. As a result, new languages will have a harder time gaining
popularity since coders will not write many programs in them.[134]

Dialects, flavors and implementations

A dialect of a programming language or a data exchange language is a (relatively small)
variation or extension of the language that does not change its intrinsic nature. With languages
such as Scheme and Forth, standards may be considered insufficient, inadequate, or illegitimate
by implementors, so often they will deviate from the standard, making a new dialect. In other
cases, a dialect is created for use in a domain-specific language, often a subset. In the Lisp
world, most languages that use basic S-expression syntax and Lisp-like semantics are
considered Lisp dialects, although they vary wildly as do, say, Racket and Clojure. As it is
common for one language to have several dialects, it can become quite difficult for an
inexperienced programmer to find the right documentation. The BASIC language has many
dialects.

Classifications
Programming languages can be described per the following high-level yet sometimes
overlapping classifications:[135]

Imperative

An imperative programming language supports implementing logic encoded as a sequence of

ordered operations. Most popularly used languages are classified as imperative.[136]

Functional

A functional programming language supports successively applying functions to the given

parameters. Although appreciated by many researchers for their simplicity and elegance,
problems with efficiency have prevented them from being widely adopted.[137]

Logic

A logic programming language is designed so that the software, rather than the programmer,
decides what order in which the instructions are executed.[138]

Object-oriented

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is characterized by features such as data abstraction,

inheritance, and dynamic dispatch. OOP is supported by most popular imperative languages
and some functional languages.[136]

[Link] Page 14 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Markup

Although a markup language is not a programming language per se, it might support
integration with a programming language.

Special

There are special-purpose languages that are not easily compared to other programming
languages.[139]

See also
Comparison of programming languages
Comparison of programming languages (basic instructions)
Computer programming
Computer science and Outline of computer science
Domain-specific language
Domain-specific modeling
Educational programming language
Esoteric programming language
Extensible programming
Category:Extensible syntax programming languages
Invariant-based programming
Language-oriented programming
List of BASIC dialects
List of open-source programming languages
List of programming language researchers
Lists of programming languages
Logic programming
Literate programming
Metalanguage
Metaprogramming
Ruby (programming language) § Metaprogramming
Modeling language
Programming language theory
Programming languages used in most popular websites
Pseudocode
Rebol § Dialects
Reflective programming
Scientific programming language
Scripting language
Semantics (logic)
Software engineering and List of software engineering topics
[Link] Page 15 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Software engineering and List of software engineering topics

Syntax (logic)
Computer
References programming portal

1. Information technology — Vocabulary ([Link]

2. Sebesta, Robert W. (2023). Concepts of Programming Languages (12th global ed.).
Pearson. pp. 46–51. ISBN 978-1-292-43682-1.
3. Sebesta, Robert (2022). Concepts of Programming Languages: Global Edition (12th
global ed.). Harlow: Pearson. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-292-43682-1.
4. "High-level languages" ([Link] ada
computer science. 11 May 2026.
5. Chauhan, Sharad (2013). "10". Programming Languages - Design and Constructs ([Link]
[Link]/books?id=qKRnohkDbb0C). University Science Press. p. 235. ISBN 978-
93-81159-41-5. Retrieved 10 September 2025. "Like our natural languages, programming
languages facilitate the expression and communication between people. However,
programming languages differ from natural languages in two ways. First, programming
languages also enables communication of ideas between people and computing machines.
Second, programming languages have a narrower expressive domain than our natural
languages. That is, they facilitate only the communication of computational ideas."
6. Robert A. Edmunds, The Prentice-Hall standard glossary of computer terminology, Prentice-
Hall, 1985, p. 91
7. Pascal Lando, Anne Lapujade, Gilles Kassel, and Frédéric Fürst, Towards a General
Ontology of Computer Programs ([Link]
2007_final.pdf) Archived ([Link]
[Link]/~site-ic/site/IMG/pdf/ICSOFT2007_final.pdf) 7 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine,
ICSOFT 2007 ([Link] Archived ([Link]
[Link]/web/20100427063709/[Link] 27
April 2010 at the Wayback Machine, pp. 163–170
8. R. Narasimhan, Programming Languages and Computers: A Unified Metatheory, pp. 189–
247 in Franz Alt, Morris Rubinoff (eds.) Advances in computers, Volume 8, Academic Press,
1994, ISBN 0-12-012108-5, p.215: "[...] the model [...] for computer languages differs from
that [...] for programming languages in only two respects. In a computer language, there are
only finitely many names—or registers—which can assume only finitely many values—or
states—and these states are not further distinguished in terms of any other attributes.
[author's footnote:] This may sound like a truism but its implications are far-reaching. For
example, it would imply that any model for programming languages, by fixing certain of its
parameters or features, should be reducible in a natural way to a model for computer
languages."
9. John C. Reynolds, "Some thoughts on teaching programming and programming
languages", SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 43, Issue 11, November 2008, p.109
10. Hierso, Severine (10 June 2022). "Coding From 1849 to 2022: a Guide to The Timeline of
Programming Languages" ([Link]
rship-news/timeline-of-programming-languages). IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved 1 March
2026.
11. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 519.
12. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 520–521.
13. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 521.
[Link] Page 16 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

13. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 521.

14. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 522.
15. Sebesta 2012, p. 42.
16. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 524.
17. Sebesta 2012, pp. 42–44.
18. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 523–524.
19. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 527.
20. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 528.
21. "How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language" ([Link]
4/[Link]). [Link]. Archived ([Link]
s://[Link]/2018/10/14/[Link]) from the original on 10 April 2024. Retrieved
10 April 2024.
22. Sebesta 2012, pp. 47–48.
23. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 526.
24. Sebesta 2012, p. 50.
25. Sebesta 2012, pp. 701–703.
26. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 524–525.
27. Sebesta 2012, pp. 56–57.
28. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 525.
29. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 526–527.
30. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 531.
31. Sebesta 2012, p. 79.
32. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 530.
33. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 532–533.
34. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 534.
35. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 534–535.
36. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 535.
37. Sebesta 2012, p. 736.
38. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 536.
39. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 536–537.
40. Sebesta 2012, pp. 91–92.
41. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 538–539.
42. Sebesta 2012, pp. 97–99.
43. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 542.
44. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 474–475, 477, 542.
45. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, pp. 542–543.
46. Gabbrielli & Martini 2023, p. 544.
47. Bezanson, Jeff; Karpinski, Stefan; Shah, Viral B.; Edelman, Alan (2012). "Julia: A Fast
Dynamic Language for Technical Computing". arXiv:1209.5145 ([Link]
145) [[Link] ([Link]
48. Sáez-López, J.M., Román-González, M. and Vázquez-Cano, E., 2016. Visual programming
languages integrated across the curriculum in elementary school: A two year case study
using "Scratch" in five schools. Computers & Education, 97, pp.129-141.
49. Kodosky, J., 2020. LabVIEW. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages,
[Link] Page 17 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

49. Kodosky, J., 2020. LabVIEW. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages,
4(HOPL), pp.1-54.
50. Fernando, A. and Warusawithana, L., 2020. Beginning Ballerina Programming: From Novice
to Professional. Apress.
51. Baluprithviraj, K.N., Bharathi, K.R., Chendhuran, S. and Lokeshwaran, P., 2021, March.
Artificial intelligence based smart door with face mask detection. In 2021 International
Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Smart Systems (ICAIS) (pp. 543-548). IEEE.
52. Sewell, B., 2015. Blueprints visual scripting for unreal engine. Packt Publishing Ltd.
53. Bertolini, L., 2018. Hands-On Game Development without Coding: Create 2D and 3D
games with Visual Scripting in Unity. Packt Publishing Ltd.
54. Michael Sipser (1996). Introduction to the Theory of Computation. PWS Publishing.
ISBN 978-0-534-94728-6. Section 2.2: Pushdown Automata, pp.101–114.
55. Jeffrey Kegler, "Perl and Undecidability ([Link]
dability) Archived ([Link]
m/Home/perl-and-undecidability) 17 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine", The Perl
Review. Papers 2 and 3 prove, using respectively Rice's theorem and direct reduction to the
halting problem, that the parsing of Perl programs is in general undecidable.
56. Marty Hall, 1995, Lecture Notes: Macros ([Link]
ml) Archived ([Link]
p-Notes/[Link]) 6 August 2013 at the Wayback Machine, PostScript version ([Link]
[Link]/~hall/Lisp-Notes/[Link]) Archived ([Link]
11709/[Link] 17 August 2000 at the Wayback
Machine
57. Aaby, Anthony (2004). Introduction to Programming Languages ([Link]
b/20121108043216/[Link]
m). Archived from the original ([Link]
ok/[Link]) on 8 November 2012. Retrieved 29 September 2012.
58. Michael Lee Scott, Programming language pragmatics, Edition 2, Morgan Kaufmann, 2006,
ISBN 0-12-633951-1, p. 18–19
59. Winskel, Glynn (5 February 1993). The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages: An
Introduction ([Link] MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-
262-73103-4.
60. Sebesta 2012, p. 244.
61. Sebesta 2012, p. 245.
62. Andrew Cooke. "Introduction To Computer Languages" ([Link]
tml). Archived ([Link]
[Link]) from the original on 15 August 2012. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
63. Sebesta 2012, pp. 15, 408–409.
64. Sebesta 2012, pp. 303–304.
65. Sebesta 2012, pp. 246–247.
66. Sebesta 2012, p. 249.
67. Sebesta 2012, p. 260.
68. Sebesta 2012, p. 250.
69. Sebesta 2012, p. 254.
70. Sebesta 2012, pp. 281–282.
71. Sebesta 2012, pp. 272–273.

[Link] Page 18 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

72. Sebesta 2012, pp. 276–277.

73. Sebesta 2012, p. 280.
74. Sebesta 2012, pp. 289–290.
75. Sebesta 2012, p. 255.
76. Sebesta 2012, pp. 244–245.
77. Sebesta 2012, p. 477.
78. Sebesta 2012, p. 211.
79. Leivant, Daniel (1983). Polymorphic type inference. ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on
Principles of programming languages. Austin, Texas: ACM Press. pp. 88–98.
doi:10.1145/567067.567077 ([Link] ISBN 978-0-
89791-090-3.
80. Sebesta 2012, pp. 212–213.
81. Sebesta 2012, pp. 284–285.
82. Sebesta 2012, p. 576.
83. Sebesta 2012, p. 579.
84. Sebesta 2012, p. 585.
85. Sebesta 2012, pp. 585–586.
86. Sebesta 2012, pp. 630, 634.
87. Sebesta 2012, p. 635.
88. Sebesta 2012, p. 631.
89. Sebesta 2012, p. 261.
90. Sebesta 2012, p. 632.
91. Sebesta 2012, pp. 631, 635–636.
92. Sebesta 2012, p. 18.
93. Sebesta 2012, p. 19.
94. Nofre, Priestley & Alberts 2014, p. 55.
95. Nofre, Priestley & Alberts 2014, p. 60.
96. Sebesta 2012, p. 8.
97. Sebesta 2012, pp. 16–17.
98. Sebesta 2012, pp. 8–9.
99. Sebesta 2012, pp. 9–10.
100. Sebesta 2012, pp. 12–13.
101. Sebesta 2012, p. 13.
102. Sebesta 2012, pp. 14–15.
103. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.: The Mythical Man-Month, Addison-Wesley, 1982, pp. 93–94
104. Busbee, Kenneth Leroy; Braunschweig, Dave (15 December 2018). "Standard Libraries" (ht
tps://[Link]/programmingfundamentals/chapter/standard-libraries/).
Programming Fundamentals – A Modular Structured Approach. Retrieved 27 January 2024.
105. Sebesta 2012, p. 15.
106. Sebesta 2012, pp. 8, 16.
107. Sebesta 2012, pp. 18, 23.
108. Sebesta 2012, p. 23.
109. Dijkstra, Edsger W. On the foolishness of "natural language programming." ([Link]
[Link] Page 19 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

109. Dijkstra, Edsger W. On the foolishness of "natural language programming." ([Link]

[Link]/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/[Link]) Archived ([Link]
org/web/20080120201526/[Link]
[Link]) 20 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine EWD667.
110. Perlis, Alan (September 1982). "Epigrams on Programming" ([Link]
[Link]/users/klaeren/[Link]). SIGPLAN Notices Vol. 17, No. 9. pp. 7–13.
Archived ([Link]
[Link]/users/klaeren/[Link]) from the original on 17 January 1999.
111. Milner, R.; M. Tofte; R. Harper; D. MacQueen (1997). The Definition of Standard ML
(Revised). MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-63181-5.
112. Kelsey, Richard; William Clinger; Jonathan Rees (February 1998). "Section 7.2 Formal
semantics" ([Link]
l#%_sec_7.2). Revised5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme. Archived ([Link]
[Link]/web/20060706081110/[Link]
HTML/[Link]#%_sec_7.2) from the original on 6 July 2006.
113. ANSI – Programming Language Rexx, X3-274.1996
114. Sebesta 2012, pp. 23–24.
115. Sebesta 2012, pp. 25–27.
116. Sebesta 2012, p. 27.
117. Sebesta 2012, p. 28.
118. Sebesta 2012, pp. 29–30.
119. See: Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc.
120. "Guide to Programming Languages | [Link]" ([Link]
org/resources/computer-programming-languages/). [Link]. Archived (https://
[Link]/web/20180513223729/[Link]
er-programming-languages/) from the original on 13 May 2018. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
121. "The basics" ([Link] [Link].
10 May 2011. Archived ([Link]
developerworks/library/os-erlang1/[Link]) from the original on 14 May 2018. Retrieved
13 May 2018.
122. Abdelaziz, Abdullah I.; Hanson, Kent A.; Gaber, Charles E.; Lee, Todd A. (2023).
"Optimizing large real-world data analysis with parquet files in R: A step-by-step tutorial" (htt
ps://[Link]/10.1002%2Fpds.5728). Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety. 33 (3) e5728.
doi:10.1002/pds.5728 ([Link] PMID 37984998 ([Link]
[Link]/37984998).
123. "HOPL: an interactive Roster of Programming Languages" ([Link]
10220044217/[Link] Australia: Murdoch University. Archived from
the original ([Link] on 20 February 2011. Retrieved 1 June 2009.
"This site lists 8512 languages."
124. Mayer, Philip; Bauer, Alexander (2015). "An empirical analysis of the utilization of multiple
programming languages in open source projects". Proceedings of the 19th International
Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering. Proceedings of the
19th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering –
EASE '15. New York, NY, US: ACM. pp. 4:1–4:10. doi:10.1145/2745802.2745805 ([Link]
[Link]/10.1145%2F2745802.2745805). ISBN 978-1-4503-3350-4. "Results: We found (a) a
mean number of 5 languages per project with a clearly dominant main general-purpose
language and 5 often-used DSL types, (b) a significant influence of the size, number of
commits, and the main language on the number of languages as well as no significant
influence of age and number of contributors, and (c) three language ecosystems grouped
[Link] Page 20 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

influence of age and number of contributors, and (c) three language ecosystems grouped
around XML, Shell/Make, and HTML/CSS. Conclusions: Multi-language programming
seems to be common in open-source projects and is a factor that must be dealt with in
tooling and when assessing the development and maintenance of such software systems."
125. Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (htt
ps://[Link]/web/20090226050622/[Link]
-[Link]). Archived from the original ([Link]
[Link]) on 26 February 2009. Retrieved 3 March 2009.
126. Vicki, Brown; Morin, Rich (1999). "Scripting Languages" ([Link]
actech/Vol.15/15.09/ScriptingLanguages/[Link]). MacTech. Archived ([Link]
[Link]/web/20171202235828/[Link]
gLanguages/[Link]) from the original on 2 December 2017.
127. Georgina Swan (21 September 2009). "COBOL turns 50" ([Link]
1019181128/[Link]
Computerworld. Archived from the original ([Link]
9/cobol_turns_50/) on 19 October 2013. Retrieved 19 October 2013.
128. Ed Airey (3 May 2012). "7 Myths of COBOL Debunked" ([Link]
er/[Link]). [Link]. Archived ([Link]
20131019171802/[Link]
from the original on 19 October 2013. Retrieved 19 October 2013.
129. Nicholas Enticknap. "SSL/Computer Weekly IT salary survey: finance boom drives IT job
growth" ([Link]
-[Link]). Computer Weekly. Archived ([Link]
[Link]/web/20111026035734/[Link]
[Link]) from the original on
26 October 2011. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
130. "Counting programming languages by book sales" ([Link]
23127/[Link]
[Link]. 2 August 2006. Archived from the original ([Link]
s/2006/08/programming_language_trends_1.html) on 17 May 2008.
131. Bieman, J.M.; Murdock, V., Finding code on the World Wide Web: a preliminary
investigation, Proceedings First IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and
Manipulation, 2001
132. "Most Popular and Influential Programming Languages of 2018" ([Link]
r-programming-languages-2018/). [Link]. 18 December 2017. Archived ([Link]
[Link]/web/20180830004924/[Link]
8/) from the original on 30 August 2018. Retrieved 29 August 2018.
133. "TIOBE Index" ([Link] Retrieved 24 June 2024.
134. "IEEE Spectrum" ([Link] Retrieved
25 September 2025.
135. Sebesta 2012, p. 21.
136. Sebesta 2012, pp. 21–22.
137. Sebesta 2012, p. 12.
138. Sebesta 2012, p. 22.
139. Sebesta 2012, pp. 22–23.

[Link] Page 21 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

Further reading
Abelson, Harold; Sussman, Gerald Jay (1996). Structure and Interpretation of Computer
Programs ([Link]
xt/book/[Link]) (2nd ed.). MIT Press. Archived from the original ([Link]
[Link]/sicp/full-text/book/[Link]) on 9 March 2018.
Raphael Finkel: Advanced Programming Language Design ([Link]
141022141742/[Link] Addison
Wesley 1995.
Daniel P. Friedman, Mitchell Wand, Christopher T. Haynes: Essentials of Programming
Languages, The MIT Press 2001.
David Gelernter, Suresh Jagannathan: Programming Linguistics, The MIT Press 1990.
Ellis Horowitz (ed.): Programming Languages, a Grand Tour (3rd ed.), 1987.
Ellis Horowitz: Fundamentals of Programming Languages, 1989.
Shriram Krishnamurthi: Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation, online
publication ([Link] Archived (http
s://[Link]/web/20210430210417/[Link]
ProgLangs/) 30 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine.
Gabbrielli, Maurizio; Martini, Simone (2023). Programming Languages: Principles and
Paradigms (2nd ed.). Springer. ISBN 978-3-031-34144-1.
Bruce J. MacLennan: Principles of Programming Languages: Design, Evaluation, and
Implementation, Oxford University Press 1999.
John C. Mitchell: Concepts in Programming Languages, Cambridge University Press 2002.
Nofre, David; Priestley, Mark; Alberts, Gerard (2014). "When Technology Became
Language: The Origins of the Linguistic Conception of Computer Programming, 1950–
1960". Technology and Culture. 55 (1): 40–75. doi:10.1353/tech.2014.0031 ([Link]
0.1353%2Ftech.2014.0031). ISSN 0040-165X ([Link]
JSTOR 24468397 ([Link] PMID 24988794 ([Link]
[Link]/24988794).
Benjamin C. Pierce: Types and Programming Languages, The MIT Press 2002.
Terrence W. Pratt and Marvin Victor Zelkowitz: Programming Languages: Design and
Implementation (4th ed.), Prentice Hall 2000.
Peter H. Salus. Handbook of Programming Languages (4 vols.). Macmillan 1998.
Ravi Sethi: Programming Languages: Concepts and Constructs, 2nd ed., Addison-Wesley
1996.
Michael L. Scott and Jonathan Aldrich: Programming Language Pragmatics, 5th ed.,
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers 2025.
Sebesta, Robert W. (2012). Concepts of Programming Languages (10 ed.). Addison-
Wesley. ISBN 978-0-13-139531-2.
Franklyn Turbak and David Gifford with Mark Sheldon: Design Concepts in Programming
Languages, The MIT Press 2009.
Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi. Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer
Programming, The MIT Press 2004.
David A. Watt. Programming Language Concepts and Paradigms. Prentice Hall 1990.
David A. Watt and Muffy Thomas. Programming Language Syntax and Semantics. Prentice
[Link] Page 22 of 23
Programming language - Wikipedia 18/7/26, 20:46

David A. Watt and Muffy Thomas. Programming Language Syntax and Semantics. Prentice
Hall 1991.
David A. Watt. Programming Language Processors. Prentice Hall 1993.
David A. Watt. Programming Language Design Concepts. John Wiley & Sons 2004.
Wilson, Leslie B. (2001). Comparative Programming Languages, Third Edition. Addison-
Wesley. ISBN 0-201-71012-9.

Retrieved from "[Link]

[Link] Page 23 of 23