Fundamentals

Natural Languages vs Programming Languages

A complete set of known commands is called an instruction list, sometimes abbreviated to IL. Different types of computers may vary depending on the size of their ILs, and the instructions could be completely different in different models.

What makes a language?

We can say that each language (machine or natural, it doesn't matter) consists of the following elements:

AN ALPHABET
a set of symbols used to build words of a certain language (e.g., the Latin alphabet for English, the Cyrillic alphabet for Russian, Kanji for Japanese, and so on)
A LEXIS
(aka a dictionary) a set of words the language offers its users (e.g., the word "computer" comes from the English language dictionary, while "cmoptrue" doesn't; the word "chat" is present both in English and French dictionaries, but their meanings are different)
A SYNTAX
a set of rules (formal or informal, written or felt intuitively) used to determine if a certain string of words forms a valid sentence (e.g., "I am a python" is a syntactically correct phrase, while "I a python am" isn't)
SEMANTICS
a set of rules determining if a certain phrase makes sense (e.g., "I ate a doughnut" makes sense, but "A doughnut ate me" doesn't)

The IL is, in fact, the alphabet of a machine language. This is the simplest and most primary set of symbols we can use to give commands to a computer. It's the computer's mother tongue.

A program written in a high-level programming language is called a source code (in contrast to the machine code executed by computers). Similarly, the file containing the source code is called the source file.

Compilation vs. interpretation

There are two different ways of transforming a program from a high-level programming language into machine language:

COMPILATION - the source program is translated once (however, this act must be repeated each time you modify the source code) by getting a file (e.g., an .exe file if the code is intended to be run under MS Windows) containing the machine code; now you can distribute the file worldwide; the program that performs this translation is called a compiler or translator;
INTERPRETATION - you (or any user of the code) can translate the source program each time it has to be run; the program performing this kind of transformation is called an interpreter, as it interprets the code every time it is intended to be executed; it also means that you cannot just distribute the source code as-is, because the end-user also needs the interpreter to execute it.

Due to some very fundamental reasons, a particular high-level programming language is designed to fall into one of these two categories.

There are very few languages that can be both compiled and interpreted. Usually, a programming language is projected with this factor in its constructors' minds - will it be compiled or interpreted?

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What makes a language?

We can say that each language (machine or natural, it doesn't matter) consists of the following elements:

AN ALPHABET

a set of symbols used to build words of a certain language (e.g., the Latin alphabet for English, the Cyrillic alphabet for Russian, Kanji for Japanese, and so on)

A LEXIS

(aka a dictionary) a set of words the language offers its users (e.g., the word "computer" comes from the English language dictionary, while "cmoptrue" doesn't; the word "chat" is present both in English and French dictionaries, but their meanings are different)

A SYNTAX

a set of rules (formal or informal, written or felt intuitively) used to determine if a certain string of words forms a valid sentence (e.g., "I am a python" is a syntactically correct phrase, while "I a python am" isn't)

SEMANTICS

a set of rules determining if a certain phrase makes sense (e.g., "I ate a doughnut" makes sense, but "A doughnut ate me" doesn't)

The IL is, in fact, the alphabet of a machine language. This is the simplest and most primary set of symbols we can use to give commands to a computer. It's the computer's mother tongue.

Compilation vs. interpretation

There are two different ways of transforming a program from a high-level programming language into machine language:

COMPILATION - the source program is translated once (however, this act must be repeated each time you modify the source code) by getting a file (e.g., an .exe file if the code is intended to be run under MS Windows) containing the machine code; now you can distribute the file worldwide; the program that performs this translation is called a compiler or translator;

INTERPRETATION - you (or any user of the code) can translate the source program each time it has to be run; the program performing this kind of transformation is called an interpreter, as it interprets the code every time it is intended to be executed; it also means that you cannot just distribute the source code as-is, because the end-user also needs the interpreter to execute it.

Due to some very fundamental reasons, a particular high-level programming language is designed to fall into one of these two categories.

There are very few languages that can be both compiled and interpreted. Usually, a programming language is projected with this factor in its constructors' minds - will it be compiled or interpreted?