Chapter 7. How Programming Languages Work

How Programming Languages Work

OUR most fundamental tool as intelligent beings is language. It is through language that you learn new information and share your knowledge, feelings, and experiences with others. Through language, you can express any thought anyone has ever had and describe any event, real or fictional. The world is controlled through language. Presidents to petty functionaries, generals to GIs, CEOs to clerks—all rely on language to give instructions to others and to gather information.

Language is a necessity for a computer, too. Software is created using special languages that provide instructions for telling the computer ...

Get How Computers Work, Ninth Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.