34 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
34 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
# Programming Language
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A programming language is a computer language in which programs can be written, it can either be compiled into native machine code or interpreted.
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Different programming languages offers distinct amount of abstraction over the machine (low-level and high-level),
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being the so called scripting languages the ones with the higher level of abstraction, for example.
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The distinction between compiled and interpreted languages can be a bit blurry sometimes, since most "serious" "interpreted"
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programming languages actually *compile* to [bytecode](bytecode.md) (instead of machine code) something that can be considered
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as compilation. So to summarise, "compiled language" refers to a language that compiles to machine code while an "interpreted language"
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compiles to bytecode or is executed by a tree-walk interpreter.
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In some ways, assembly can be considered to be a low-level programming language, since it abstracts the numerical opcodes of the machine with mnemonics
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(such as `mov`, `call`, `mul`, etc.) and most offer macro capabilities.
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Some bloated programming languages such as Python or JavaScript may be acceptable for simple throwaway scripts or for learning programming,
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but no serious software should be written on them.
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## List of acceptable and non-acceptable (harmful) languages
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- [Assembly](assembly.md): yes, but non portable.
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- [C](c.md): yes, the first and natural choice for writing programs. The Unix language.
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- [Lua](lua.md): yes, good for embedding and quick scripts.
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- [Lisp](lisp.md): yes, flexible and relatively fast, prefer Scheme over the more bloated [Common Lisp](common_lisp.md) (still better than C++ however).
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- [Forth](forth.md): yes, niche, but it is a nice exercise on [minimalism](minimalism.md).
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- [Pascal](pascal.md) (no [OOP](oop.md)): yes, old school and quite verbose, but small and fast compared to, say C++ or Rust; comparable to C in terms
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of features.
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- [AWK](awk.md): yes, the standard [Unix](unix.md) [DSL](dsl.md) for text processing.
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- ([POSIX](posix.md)) [Shell Script](shell_script.md): yes, has its quirks.
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- [Perl](perl.md): acceptable, could be used as a replacement for more complex shell scripts and AWK, since it is commonly installed in most
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modern unixes.
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- [Go](golang.md): acceptable but beware of the big executable sizes.
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- [PHP](php.md) (no OOP): acceptable, if you need interactive web pages but stay away from [frameworks](frameworks.md).
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- [Python](python.md): Slow and bloated, avoid. Can be acceptable if used as a beginners language only.
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- [C++](cpp.md): No.
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- [JavaScript](javascript.md): No.
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- [Rust](rust.md): NO.
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