Programming language
A programming language is a human readable lexicon and grammar that a programmer uses to instruct a computer how to operate.
Programs written in a programming language have to be translated into a code (directly, or indirectly through an interpreter) the central processing unit (CPU) can understand and execute machine code. The programming language allows the programmer to define data structures and combine them with logic and procedural instructions. Generally a programming language reflects the state of development of the hardware and its processing power.
Programming languages can generally be divided into two categories:
Compiled languages must first be translated by a compiler from human readable source code to an object code. A linker is often applied to this code to assemble it with existing libraries and runtime environments into a form the computer can run.
Interpreted languages rely on an application, the interpreter, that translates the (sometimes human readable) source code into machine code through pre-existing interfaces. For example, an interpreter would read a line such as this: PRINT "Cookies are yummy!" and call the predefined, platform independent function PRINT inside the interpreter itself where the interpreter then executes the platform dependent function call that corresponds with PRINT. The division between compiled languages and interpreted languages is becoming fuzzier with platforms such as Java and the .NET framework, both of which require sophisticated, optimized "runtime" engines to execute a program, but include Just-In-Time compilation to native code.