how are program languages created?

[echy]

how was java, html, php, etc....... created?

i have seen videos of how programming languages are created and some people say that they created programming languages using the program language "BASIC"

if they created programing languages using basic then how was basic created?....

I'm confused can someone give me more clarity on this topic

 

[DocSwag]

Earliest on it was literally by punching in 1s and 0s (machine code). Assembly code is like the next level up, with basic instructions like adding, multiplying, subtracting, shifting (move the bits of a number to the left or right), loads (load a value from memory to a register or moving it from say memory to cache), stores (opposite of loads), etc. It's extremely low level but not as annoying as machine code. I'm pretty sure that's what's used to write it.

 

If you're really curious, I think that the book, Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective goes into assembly code (you can find a PDF online).

[NoRomanBatmansAllowed]

12 minutes ago, echy said:

how was java, html, php, etc....... created?

i have seen videos of how programming languages are created and some people say that they created programming languages using the program language "BASIC"

if they created programing languages using basic then how was basic created?....

I'm confused can someone give me more clarity on this topic

 

First thing you have to understand, is that software is just a predetermined set of electrical signals for the CPU.

 

What happens is that machine code was first invented, directly interfacing with the CPU, basically the most basic of basic programming languages. Sure, it worked, but it was basically unreadable by humans. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_code)

 

Then came along Assembly, which was a bit more readable, but by today's standards still extremely unreadable, dealing with physically moving the memory entry bit by bit. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language)

 

Things started to get a bit more advanced, and people started to build things using Assembly. BASIC, C, and most notably (IMO) Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Using Basic and C, people started developing OOP related languages, such as C++, and Java (which became all the rage).

 

A few more years passed and then dynamically typed languages like Python started to appear, along with newer modern technologies like Node.js, Ruby, etc.

 

 

All in all, I did skip over a lot of things, Pascal, COBOL, and a bunch of other giants, so this is by no means exhaustive, just a brief overview.

[straight_stewie]

4 hours ago, echy said:

how was java, html, php, etc....... created?

i have seen videos of how programming languages are created and some people say that they created programming languages using the program language "BASIC"

if they created programing languages using basic then how was basic created?....

I'm confused can someone give me more clarity on this topic

Basically this:

https://ia800503.us.archive.org/10/items/marki_operman_1946/MarkI_operMan_1946.pdf

But on a serious note, really this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_language

 

Mixed with this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler

 

With a touch of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_set

 

A dash of this:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Microprocessor_Design

 

Basically, computers operate on binary strings known as machine code and data. There are various assembly language architectures (which are essentially human readable machine code) available to the programmer depending on which microprocessor he or she is programming. Then comes abstractions, which allow the programmer to write in an even more human readable way, and then the computer is used to parse (or compile) this human readable text into assembly or machine code, which is then executed by the computer. 

Sorry for the LMGTFY reply, but this is such a deep subject that it's nearly impossible to cover even an infinitesimal amount of the subject matter in a reasonable amount of time.

[espurritado]

As the people before me have said computers basically understand 1s and 0s.

It depends on the programming language on how it works, but let's assume a compiled language.

First you have to define the language, the syntax, the semantic, the basic words, the basic types, etc.

Then you have to create somehow a compiler, something that from a text file with a piece of code that follows the rules described in the previous step creates a file with the a of instructions for an OS to do what you asked to do.

And there you go, you have your programming language.

There's obviously more to it, you have to determine the memory structure for variables, the organization of your reserved words, the hierarchy of your names in the different levels.

 

[SCHISCHKA]

A programming language starts on paper with a language definition. A programming language exists before the compiler or any program that converts the human readable code to machine readable instructions. There is no need to complicate this question with anything else. a programming language is very simply the same as what humans use like English or French 

[straight_stewie]

48 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

There is no need to complicate this question with anything else. a programming language is very simply the same as what humans use like English or French 

Not exactly similar, but somewhat similar yes. Spoken languages are normally informal bastardizations of context sensitive formal written languages. Programming languages are normally context free formal languages in all cases. In other words, as the English as a second language speakers here will surely know, spoken word languages (or even written human languages) are sometimes very ambiguous.

 

Think about words with multiple, differing definitions (homonyms) depending on the context, such as bow. Bow can mean the front of a boat, to bend over (bow down), a primitive weapon that fires an arrow, a tied ribbon such as what's on a Christmas present or your shoes, or even a district in London. Understanding which definition of "bow" is to be used depends on the context in which the word occurs. Programming languages normally don't allow this kind of ambiguity, and as a result are "context free". 

 

But the general point of them is the same: To communicate some meaning. In human languages this could be anything, while in programming languages it  almost always  means "to communicate a series of steps that should be used to solve a problem".

[SilicateWielder]

On 4/7/2017 at 8:25 PM, DocSwag said:

Earliest on it was literally by punching in 1s and 0s (machine code). Assembly code is like the next level up, with basic instructions like adding, multiplying, subtracting, shifting (move the bits of a number to the left or right), loads (load a value from memory to a register or moving it from say memory to cache), stores (opposite of loads), etc. It's extremely low level but not as annoying as machine code. I'm pretty sure that's what's used to write it.

 

If you're really curious, I think that the book, Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective goes into assembly code (you can find a PDF online).

We should also mention that machine code is actually physically built into the hardware, it's also reffered to as the instruction set of a computer or processor. A 64-bit processor uses the amd64 instruction set typically it additionally can use the x86 instruction set.

 

 

[LegionOfOne]

For a TL;DR;

 

You have something called "Layers of Abstraction" which is essentially the amount of "Leaps" you are away from the hardware. EVERY programming language is at some point converted into machine code. JS is built on C which is built on basic which is built on machine code. In this way commands written in javascript can traverse the abstraction pattern when run so that the commands you desire can be executed on the hard ware. Now, that isn't to say that they are exactly translated on each conversion but essentially that's just the very high level overview. The main idea in abstracting out a layer in the cycle is to accomplish more work in less time, rather to make the code you program more meaningful. Hope that make sense.

[uzarnom]

Here is a nice video (keep in mind it may be confusing if your completely new)

around 7:10 if you want to skip everything but the actual programming