Programming language

A Programming language is a human-readable set of instructions designed to express computations and actions that can be performed by a machine, in particular a computer. Instructions can be arranged in different combinations to create programs to solve particular problems or to accomplish more general or routine tasks.

Programs can be either compiled into a set of instructions directly executable by the target machine or interpreted and executed 'on the fly'. In some instances, Java being one of the most notable of these, a program is compiled into a more general set of instructions called bytecode not intended to run on any specific machine that is then compiled or interpreted at run-time into machine specific instructions.

Some programming languages have written standard specifications of their syntax and semantics (such as the ANSI/ISO standards for C and C++). Others are defined by a common or dominant implementation.