Computer language

Formal language for communicating with a computer

A computer language is a formal language for humans to communicate with a computer; not a natural language. In earlier days of computing (before the 1980s), the term was used interchangeably with programming language, but today, used primarily for taxonomy, is a broader term that encompasses languages that are not programming in nature. Sub-categories (with possibly contended hierarchical relationships) include:

* Construction
* Programming – for controlling computer behavior
* Command – for controlling the tasks of a computer, such as starting programs
* Query – for querying databases and information systems
* Transformation – for transforming the text of a formal language into text that meets a specific goal
* Structural
* Configuration – for writing configuration files
* Data exchange – examples: JSON, XML
* Markup – for annotating a document in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from the text, such as HTML
* Page description – for describing the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap
* Style sheet – for expressing the presentation of structured documents, such as CSS
* Modeling – for designing systems
* Architecture description – for describing and representing system architecture
* Hardware description – for modeling integrated circuits
* Simulation – for simulating
* Specification – for describing what a system should do

## See also

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* Domain-specific language – Computer language specialized to a particular set of requirements or functionality
* Expression language – Computer language for creating a machine readable representation of domain knowledge
* General-purpose language – Computer language that is broadly applicable across domains
* Lists of programming languages
* Natural language processing – Processing of natural language by a computer

## External links

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* Media related to Computer languages at Wikimedia Commons

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Types of computer language

Types|

* Architecture description
* Data exchange
* Hardware description
* Knowledge representation
* Markup
* Modeling
* Programming language
* Query
* Shading
* Specification
* Stylesheet
* Transformation

See also|

* Category:Lists of computer languages
* Category:Lists of programming languages
* List of programming languages by type

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