Despite the growing interest in programming around the world, most people don’t understand programming languages and their importance. We explain the nature of computer science, how programming languages evolved, and highlight their importance.
From SW education to startups, the world is abuzz with programming fever. As the global interest in programming grows, so does the public’s curiosity about ‘programming languages’. Even people who know nothing about programming have heard the name ‘C language’ at least once, but despite the social emphasis on the importance of programming and its education, most people don’t even know what programming languages and programming are. Some people think of SW as practical training like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This is because while the President has emphasized SW education, there has been a lack of effort to explain and convince the public of the details of the policy.
So what is programming, and what is a programming language? This question is so elementary, in fact, that to answer it we have to go all the way back to defining what computer science is. So what is computer science anyway?
Computer science can be summarized as the mechanization of abstraction. If you take a computer and break it down into its component parts, at the lowest level you have wires. These wires have power devices connected to them so that current can flow through them, and we “informationalize” them with a value of 1 when current flows through them and 0 when it doesn’t. The number ‘1’ is not actually written anywhere on the computer, but we ‘abstract’ the flow of current as 1. The history of computer science starts here and builds on this process of abstraction, turning all the parts of a computer into functional modules (black boxes). This process of systematically abstracting each element of a computer is what computer science is all about, and the most important concept in computer science is the programming language that programmers use to tell the CPU what to do.
As mentioned above, computers treat the flow of electricity as either 0s or 1s, and the combination of 0s and 1s that a computer’s CPU can actually read and execute is called machine language. Assembly language is a way to give each of these instructions a human-recognizable mnemonic to make it easier for humans to control the computer’s behavior. Assembler is a language that deals directly with memory in basic units, piece by piece, and machine language and assembler are collectively referred to as low-level programming languages. As the language that gives instructions to the computer at the level closest to the CPU, assembler is actually a machine control language rather than a programming language. Because it’s impossible to program in Assembler without a general knowledge of computer structure, few people program using it.
Instead, computer scientists have developed languages, such as the C language, that allow you to program without understanding the entire structure of a computer, but only needing to know the grammar of the language. These languages at a higher level of abstraction are called high-level programming languages. Any program written in a high-level programming language must be translated into assembly language by a compiler (translator 1) or interpreter (translator 2), no matter what language the source code is written in. The translator creates assembly code with the same algorithm as the original code, and this code is used by the operating system to run the CPU. So the higher abstraction level languages have the advantage of being easier for humans to understand, but they must go through a complex compilation process before the program can run.
In the end, the list of instructions that a CPU can understand is called a program, the process of combining instructions to create a program is called programming, and the human-computer conventions for programming are called a programming language. In other words, programming languages are a systematic abstraction unique to computer science, and are the human rules of command for dealing with computers.
Programming languages have evolved to make it easier for humans to understand code, and unless the ultimate programming language is developed, the effort will continue. Even now, Google, Microsoft, and other leading tech companies are working on advanced programming languages that are simpler, more general, and more human-friendly. While no one knows if there will ever be an ultimate programming language, there are arguments that a single language is needed if the field of SW is to move beyond the art of programming and into the realm of science like math and chemistry. The global craze for learning to program is also calling for the ultimate language. While Dr. Esperanto’s dream of unifying human speech was effectively thwarted, smart computer engineers around the world are working today to create the Esperanto of computers.
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