Are you looking to become a programmer? Are you confused about the programming language to undertake? Well, this article has all the answers that you require on programming languages that are most popular. We will dig deep into the different programming languages and see how they operate, hence follow along as we review this important topic.
A bit of programming language history
Since the year 1950, so many programming languages have been devised by computer scientists, am talking about thousands of them. Some appeared then disappeared in such a quick manner that they have been forgotten. Most programming languages that did not last long faded off due to low user support. Others were not scalable and could only work on outdated computers; hence, they faded when modern computers were developed. However, a handful of programming languages have become pretty adamant in the programming industry. These languages have evolved over the years and gained more functionalities, such as parallelism, which has made them more efficient.
How we compared the programming languages
Many different methods exist that help us compare programming languages. We choose to compare them using the Abstraction level and Compilation method. It is a pretty good method to compare and identify the most efficient programming languages available in the market.
Compiling to code that can be understood by the computer
In some programming languages, programs must first be transformed into some machine code, that is, instructions that can be understood by the CPU directly. The code transformation to some machine code is referred to as compilation. Examples of compiled languages include:
- C
- C++
- Pascal
- Assembly language
Interpreted languages
The remaining languages are simply interpreted languages, for instance:
- Basics
- Javascript
- Actionscript
Programs in interpreted languages are processed during runtime. Each line is first read, then analyzed, and then executed. Repeating this process again and again in a set loop makes the interpreted languages pretty slow. In actual statistics, interpreted languages run about five to ten times slower compared to compiled languages. Two of the slowest interpreted languages are:
- Javascript
- Basic
However, interpreted languages have one advantage over compiled languages. They do not need recompiling after a change. That comes in handy, especially when you are an amateur in programming.
Due to the speed factor, compiled languages are the most used when it comes to programming games.
Abstraction level
The second method of comparing different programming languages is via their abstraction level. Abstraction level means how close the language and the hardware are. Machine codes are at the lowest abstraction level, followed by assembly language.
C++ language has a higher abstraction compared to C. C#, and Java have higher abstraction compared to C++ due to the bytecode factor. That means that they usually compile to the bytecode language. Bytecode acts as an intermediate for the two languages.
A summary on how different languages compare according to speed:
- Assembly language
- C language
- C++ language
- Pascal language
- C# language
- Java language
Those interpreted faster
- Pearl
- PHP
Programming languages interpreted slowly
- JavaScript
- ActionScript
- Basic
The computer executes machine code. A computer’s CPU can only understand this language; otherwise, it throws an error. Interpreted languages require an extra application known as an interpreter. The interpreter goes through every line of code contained in a program; then, it runs the program.
Conclusion
There exist a lot of programming languages, each one unique in its own way. We hope that this article has helped you differentiate the most commonly used of them all.