Computer languages:

1. From the following figure, you can see that all computer does is execute instructions:

2. The computer is the best slave ever invented: never goes hungry, does not protest, always ready to do the job.

3. The instructions or commands executed by the computer are encoded/represented using numeric codes (recall that every stored in the computer represented by a number - click here)

   Example: 
   	0  can mean add the next 2 numbers
   	1  can mean subtract the next 2 numbers
   	etc, etc
   

   These machine executable commands are called machine language

4. Each type of CPU speaks its own machine language

   Example CPUs: 
   
   	Intel Pentium
   	AMD K6, AMD Athlon
   	Sun Micro Computer's SPARC
   	IBM PowerPC
   

5. To allow human to write computer instructions/commands we designed special language to bridge this communication gap. These artificial language are called programming language

   Many programming languages have been defined...

   Example programming languages: 
   
   	Fortran: Formula Translator
   		 The first prog. lang., mainly used for calculation
   	Algol 60: Algorimic Language
   		 First prog. lang. designed to write structured programs
   	C: successor to the language BCMP
   		 First high level system programming language
   	Pascal: designed by Niklaus Wirth
   		 Specifically designed for teaching programming
   	Java: designed specifically with network computing in mind
   

   Conclusion: programming languages are designed with some goal in mind...

6. Programming language are in general very rigid in nature, and does not allow any ambiguity (because computers can't decipher ambiguious expressions).

7. Programs written in a programming language must first be translated into machine language before program can be executed by computer --- compile