Computer language

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

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

See also