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 encompass 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 – a language used to control the tasks of the computer itself, such as starting programs
  • Configuration language – a language used to write configuration files
  • Programming language – a formal language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer
  • Query language – a language used to make queries in databases and information systems
  • Transformation language – designed to transform some input text in a certain formal language into a modified output text that meets some specific goal
• Data exchange language – a language that is domain-independent and can be used for data from any kind of discipline; examples: JSON, XML
• Markup language – a grammar for annotating a document in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from the text, such as HTML
• Modeling language – an artificial language used to express information or knowledge, often for use in computer system design
  • Architecture description language – used as a language (or a conceptual model) to describe and represent system architectures
  • Hardware description language – used to model integrated circuits
• Page description language – describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap
• Simulation language – a language used to describe simulations
• Specification language – a language used to describe what a system should do
• Style sheet language – a computer language that expresses 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