programming language

Also known as computer language, computer programming language, coding language, computer programming

language for communicating instructions to a machine

AI overview

A programming language is a system of words and symbols that people use to write instructions that computers can understand and follow. It matters because it's the essential tool that allows humans to tell computers what to do, making everything from apps and websites to video games and artificial intelligence possible.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~37 min read

Encyclopedic overview

The source code for a computer program in C. The gray lines are comments that explain the program to humans. When compiled and run, it will give the output "Hello, world!".

A programming language is an engineered language for expressing computer programs, typically allowing software to be written in a human readable manner.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “programming language” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.