Computer Languages

A computer language, in the most popular terms, is a set of instructions we can use for writing meaningful programs that a computer can execute. Now, the computer does not understand the languages we write with. Computers are not humans. A computer only understands whether we apply an electric charge to it, or not. Although computers perceive when something is on or off (electric charges), it would take us a long time to write a program with millions of on/off combinations. So, computer scientists invented a way for us to write instructions as alphanumeric expressions, and then let other machines translate our English-like commands into millions of on/off combinations for the computer to understand. Those helper machines are called interpreters, or compilers. Interpreters and compilers are not the same thing. The compiler then translates our instructions into millions of on/off combinations, which the computer can understand. Different languages use different compilers, and that's how we can program the same computer when using different flavours of English-like instructions, such as C, Java, Python, or even JavaScript.