Difference between revisions of "What is Programming?"
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===Functional Languages=== | ===Functional Languages=== | ||
| + | Functional languages are rarely seen in everyday use; they are typically used for artificial intelligence research. However, there are some programmers who do the majority of their programming using functional languages. | ||
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| + | These languages differ from other languages in that every statement is a mathematical function. | ||
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| + | The best known functional language is ''Lisp'', though some imperative languages (such as Python) offer functional programming capabilities. | ||
Revision as of 15:34, 22 February 2007
Programming, simply put, is the act of writing computer programs. In order for a computer to do anything it must run programs. etc... is that definition circular? or just weird?
Contents
Programming Languages
Programming languages are written languages that allow people to specify how a computer should behave.
There are three major families of programming languages:
- imperative languages
- functional languages
- declarative languages
Imperative Languages
Imperative languages are the most commonly-used types of programming languages. They differ from other types of languages in that each line of code, or statement, tells the computer to do something: read this file, print this sentance, etc... Imperative languages are generally the simplest languages for beginners, but offer enough depth and control that advanced programmers make use of them too.
Some of the best-known imperative languages are:
- Java
- C/C++
- Pascal
- BASIC (Visual Basic, QuickBasic, VB.net)
Functional Languages
Functional languages are rarely seen in everyday use; they are typically used for artificial intelligence research. However, there are some programmers who do the majority of their programming using functional languages.
These languages differ from other languages in that every statement is a mathematical function.
The best known functional language is Lisp, though some imperative languages (such as Python) offer functional programming capabilities.
