Computer language

A computer language is a formal language for humans to communicate with a computer; not a natural language. In earlier days of computing (before the 1980s), the term was used interchangeably with programming language, but today is a broader term that encompasses programming language as well as other languages that are arguably not programming in nature. Sub-categories include:

• Construction language – all forms of communication by which a human can specify an executable problem solution to a computer
  • Command language – for controlling the tasks of a computer, such as starting programs
  • Configuration language – for writing configuration files
  • Programming language – for communicating instructions to a machine, particularly a computer
  • Query language – for making queries in databases and information systems
  • Transformation language – for transforming the text of a formal language into text that meets a specific goal
• Data exchange language – domain-independent language for data exchange; examples: JSON, XML
• Markup language – for annotating a document in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from the text, such as HTML
• Modeling language – for expressing information or knowledge, often for use in computer system design
  • Architecture description language – for describing and representing system architectures
  • Hardware description language – for modeling integrated circuits
• Page description language – for describing the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap
• Simulation language – for describing simulations
• Specification language – for describing what a system should do
• Style sheet language – for expressing the presentation of structured documents, such as CSS

See also

• Domain-specific language – Computer language specialized to a particular set of requirements or functionality
• Expression language – Computer language for creating a machine readable representation of domain knowledge
• General-purpose language – Computer language that is broadly applicable across domains
• Lists of programming languages
• Natural language processing – Processing of natural language by a computer

External links

• Media related to Computer languages at Wikimedia Commons