Computers are becoming more widespread every year. They are becoming faster and more convenient to use, and the profession of a programmer has long become one of the most demanded and highly paid ones. Even a person far from programming has almost certainly heard that there are programming languages. What are they for and why are there so many of them?
As perfect as a computer is, without software it is just a pile of metal and plastic. It is the programs that determine what and how the computer does, in what sequence it performs certain operations. The first programming languages began to appear in the early fifties and were used to convert simple arithmetic expressions into machine code. Machine code is a system of computer instructions interpreted directly by a microprocessor. But it is very inconvenient for a person to write a program in machine codes. In order to facilitate the work of the programmer, programming languages began to be created. Programming languages are divided into high-level and low-level languages. The higher the level of the language, the easier it is for a programmer to write in it. Such a language is more understandable for a person, since it allows using simple semantic constructions to set the necessary sequence of actions. After the program is created, it is compiled - that is, it is automatically translated into the language of machine codes that the processor understands. Low-level languages are much closer to machine code and therefore more difficult to write in. But they have their advantage - programs written in such a language are very fast and compact. The most popular low-level language is Assembler. Some of its advantages are so obvious that even in complex programs written in high-level languages, assembly is often used. Despite the existence of a large number of programming languages, the widespread ones can be counted on one finger. One of the most widespread is the C ++ language. This is a very convenient and simple enough language for a programmer, which allows you to create programs of any level of complexity. Not so long ago, Microsoft has developed the C # language (read as "si sharp"), which has a number of new features and is intended for writing programs for the Windows operating system. Microsoft has released a very popular programming environment Microsoft Visual Studio, which allows you to program in C ++, C # and some other languages. The Delphi programming language is very well known. It originates from the once famous Pascal, but thanks to the efforts of Borland, it has acquired a number of new qualities, becoming, in fact, a new language. Writing in this language is quite simple and convenient, and thanks to the Borland Delphi programming environment, it has become very widespread. Without programming languages, the existence of the Internet would have been impossible. Languages such as Perl and PHP allow you to create scripts that determine the execution of the necessary actions on the pages of the site. Even the creation of the simplest web page is impossible without knowledge of HTML - the standard document markup language. Computing devices are now everywhere: in cell phones and ATMs, in numerical control machines and televisions. It is difficult to find a sphere of life in which they would not be involved in one way or another. And all these devices work thanks to programs written using various programming languages.
