Global InformationComparison of programming languages information
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Comparison of individual languages
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Programming languages are used for controlling the behavior of a machine (often a computer). Like natural languages, programming languages follow rules for syntax and semantics.
There are thousands of programming languages[1] and new ones are created every year. Few languages ever become sufficiently popular that they are used by more than a few people, but professional programmers may use dozens of languages in a career.
Most programming languages are not standardized by an international (or national) standard, even widely used ones, such as Perl or Standard ML (despite the name). Notable standardized programming languages include ALGOL, C, C++, JavaScript (under the name ECMAScript), Smalltalk, Prolog, Common Lisp, Scheme (IEEE standard), ISLISP, Ada, Fortran, COBOL, SQL, and XQuery.
- ^ As of May 2006 Diarmuid Pigott's Encyclopedia of Computer Languages Archived 2011-02-20 at the Wayback Machine hosted at Murdoch University, Australia lists 8512 computer languages.