Programming languages

​​​​​​“The instructions that are often generated in a certain programming language using simple text editors are called source text (or source code). In order to run on a computer, the source code must be translated into the machine language of that computer (type). In contrast to higher-level programming languages and assembly language, this is a binary code that is difficult for humans to read. When people talk about programming in machine language, what is usually meant today is assembly language.

Translation into machine language can be done either before execution by a compiler or – at runtime – by an interpreter or JIT compiler. A combination of both variants is often chosen, in which the source text of the programming language used is first translated into an intermediate code, which is then converted into machine code at runtime within a runtime environment. This principle has the advantage that the same intermediate code can be executed on different platforms. Examples of such intermediate code are Java bytecode and the Common Intermediate Language.

Programming languages usually offer at least input/output commands so that the program can receive information (more precisely: data) and output it again; Declaration of variables and fields in order to be able to (temporarily) store information; basic and standard mathematical functions; Basic functions for character string processing; Control statements for conditional execution, repetition, program division (e.g. into subfunctions) and integration of libraries.
It is usually possible to create higher-level functions from these basic functions and encapsulate them in a reusable library. Getting from there to a higher-level or problem-oriented language is no longer a big step. There was soon a large number of special languages for a wide variety of application areas. This increases the efficiency of the programmers and the portability of the programs, but the processing speed of the programs created usually decreases and the power of the language decreases: the higher and more comfortable the language, the more the programmer is tied to the paths provided for in it to tread.

Languages have varying degrees of success – some “grow” and find increasingly wider use; Languages have repeatedly been designed with the aim of being general-purpose and broadband languages, often with modest success (PL/1, Ada, Algol 68). Various services attempt to measure the prevalence of different languages; For example, the TIOBE index, PYPL and the analyzes from RedMonk are well known.” [7]

[7] German Wikipedia article “Programming language”, as of February 20, 2021