Unit 1 Introduction
to Programming Language
1 Introduction
This unit introduces the
leaner to fundamental of programing language and serves as the foundation for
the entire module. Several definitions of programming language are stated and
the three categories of programming language - machine, assembly and high level
languages - are briefly discussed. The unit shall therefore expose the students
to program performance, features and the attribute of good programming
language.
2 Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
At the end of the unit, students should
able to
• Define Programming language
• Explain machine language, assembly language and high-level language
• Discuss attribute of good programming language
• Explain performance and features of programming language
3 Main Content
3.1 Introduction to
Programming language
A programming language is
a language designed to communicate instructions to a computer. They are used to
create programs that control the behavior of a machine. A programming language
is a notation for writing programs, which are specifications of a computation
or algorithm. However, some authors restrict the term "programming
language" to those languages that can express all possible algorithms.
Thus, Programming language is a set of commands, strings or characters readable
by programmers but easily translatable to machine code. It has syntax, grammar,
and semantics.
• Syntax is a set of rules that define how the commands have to be
arranged to make sense and to be correctly translatable to the machine code.
• Grammar is a set of rules of using different punctuation, quotation
marks, semicolons, and other symbols to divide and clarify the syntax of a
particular language.
• Semantics is a set of meanings assigned to every command of the
language and is used to properly translate the programme to machine code.