Programming language

A programming language is an artificial

language for expressing computer programs.[1]

Programming languages typically allow 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
such as just-in-time compilation and bytecode The source code for a computer program in C. The
interpreters.[2] gray lines are comments that explain the program to
humans. When compiled and run, it will give the output
The design of programming languages has been "Hello, world!".
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.

Related
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.[4]

The term computer language is sometimes used interchangeably with programming language[5] but some
contend they are different concepts. Some contend that programming languages are a subset of computer
languages.[6] Some use computer language to classify a language used in computing that is not
considered a programming language. Some regard a 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.[7]

John C. Reynolds emphasizes that a formal specification language is as much a programming language as
is a 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.[8]

History

Early developments
The first programmable computers were invented during the 1940s, and with them, the first programming
languages.[9] 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.[10] 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.[11]

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.[12] 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.[11] In 1957, Fortran (FORmula
TRANslation) was invented. Often considered the first compiled high-level programming
language,[11][13] Fortran has remained in use into the twenty-first century.[14]

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 interaction.[16] After the invention of the
microprocessor, computers in the 1970s became dramatically
cheaper.[17] New computers also allowed more user
interaction, which was supported by newer programming
Two people using an IBM 704 mainframe
languages.[18]
—the first hardware to support floating-
point arithmetic—in 1957. Fortran was
Lisp, implemented in 1958, was the first functional
designed for this machine.[15][14]
programming language.[19] Unlike Fortran, it supported
recursion and conditional expressions,[20] and it also
introduced dynamic memory management on a heap and automatic garbage collection.[21] For the next
decades, Lisp dominated artificial intelligence applications.[22] In 1978, another functional language, ML,
introduced inferred types and polymorphic parameters.[18][23]
After ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language) was released in 1958 and 1960,[24] it became the standard in
computing literature for describing algorithms. Although its commercial success was limited, most
popular imperative languages—including C, Pascal, Ada, C++, Java, and C#—are directly or indirectly
descended from ALGOL 60.[25][14] Among its innovations adopted by later programming languages
included greater portability and the first use of context-free, BNF grammar.[26] Simula, the first language
to support object-oriented programming (including subtypes, dynamic dispatch, and inheritance), also
descends from ALGOL and achieved commercial success.[27] C, another ALGOL descendant, has
sustained popularity into the twenty-first century. C allows access to lower-level machine operations
more 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.[18]

Prolog, designed in 1972, was the first logic programming language, communicating with a computer
using formal logic notation.[28][29] With logic programming, the programmer specifies a desired result
and allows the interpreter to decide how to achieve it.[30][29]

1980s to 2000s
During the 1980s, the invention of the personal computer
transformed the roles for which programming languages were
used.[31] New languages introduced in the 1980s included
C++, a superset of C that can compile C programs but also
supports classes and inheritance.[32] Ada and other new
languages introduced support for concurrency.[33] 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. [34][35]

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.[36] Java,
based on C++ and designed for increased portability across
systems and security, enjoyed large-scale success because A small selection of programming
these features are essential for many Internet language textbooks
applications. [37][38] 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.[39][40]

2000s to present
During the 2000s, there was a slowdown in the development of new programming languages that
achieved widespread popularity.[41] One innovation was service-oriented programming, designed to
exploit distributed systems whose components are connected by a network. Services are similar to objects
in object-oriented programming, but run on a separate process.[42] C# and F# cross-pollinated ideas
between imperative and functional programming.[43] After 2010, several new languages—Rust, Go,
Swift, Zig and Carbon —competed for the performance-critical software for which C had historically
been used.[44] Most of the new programming languages use static typing while a few numbers of new
languages use dynamic typing like Ring and Julia.[45][46]

Some of the new programming languages are classified as visual programming languages like Scratch,
LabVIEW and PWCT. Also, some of these languages mix between textual and visual programming usage
like Ballerina.[47][48][49][50] Also, this trend lead to developing projects that help in developing new VPLs
like Blockly by Google.[51] Many game engines like Unreal and Unity added support for visual scripting
too.[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
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. On the other
hand, 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 symbols
is handled by semantics (either formal or Parse tree of Python code with inset tokenization
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'].*
list ::= '(' expression* ')'

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 Syntax highlighting is often used to aid
c232 (1)). programmers in recognizing elements of source
code. The language above is Python.
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 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 the programmer for 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 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]

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 computer architecture.[92] In von 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]

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]

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. On the other hand, ideas about an algorithm
can be communicated to humans without the precision required for execution by using pseudocode,
which interleaves natural language with code written in a programming language.

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 top 100 programming languages according to popularity and
update this list every month.[133]

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]

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
Computer
programming portal

Comparison of programming languages (basic instructions)

Comparison of programming languages
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
List of BASIC dialects
List of open-source programming languages
Lists of programming languages
List of programming language researchers
Programming languages used in most popular websites
Language-oriented programming
Logic programming
Literate programming
Metalanguage
Metaprogramming
Ruby (programming language) § Metaprogramming
Modeling language
Programming language theory
Pseudocode
Rebol § Dialects
Reflective programming
 Scientific programming language
Scripting language
Semantics (logic)
Syntax (logic)
Software engineering and List of software engineering topics

References
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. Chauhan, Sharad (2013). "10". Programming Languages - Design and Constructs ([Link]
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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]
41022141742/[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 (https://
[Link]/web/20210430210417/[Link]
gLangs/) 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
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]