Programming Languages

Aprogramming language allows a devel-oper to translate logical real-world actions into operations that can be per-formed on computer hardware. In effect, it is a way to translate concrete real-world desires into computer-world operations. Programming languages advance by extending the number of operations pro-grammers can perform without thinking about them – thus making it easier to say the things they want to say. In effect, these advances hide the complexity of what is going on underneath the hood and raise the level of abstraction that programmers think about when they program. If a programmer wants to say some-thing to the computer, and he/she finds that the current language has difficulty in saying it, then he/she develops a new lan-guage or extends an existing language. Advances in programming languages tend to increase the intellectual distance between program statements and what the computer hardware actually does. The lan-guage then does more of our work, while decreasing the distance between the pro-grams written and the real world, allowing us to solve real-world problems in the con-text and language of the real world. On a subtler note, programming languages, soft-ware, computer scientists, etc. exert an influence on the real world also, drawing it ever closer to the software realm (see Figure 1). Inevitably, a new programming lan-guage enables a programmer to express an idea or concept in a simpler, more readable manner than what had come before. This simpler, more readable manner allows us to create code that is easier to verify, easier to code, and easier to debug. In essence, the more powerful a programming lan-guage is, the easier it is to express complex ideas in a simple manner