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Few things about computers and programming languages.

Computers are machines that perform tasks such as mathematical operations. In order for the computer to perform a task it needs instructions that are contained within a program. Programs reside with in the computer and are being possessed by the computer electronic devices.

So what is a programming language?  

Is a set of instructions that a computer can understand.  Computer languages have their own vocabulary, syntax and "grammatical rules". Unlike the language that we humans have, computer languages are not ambiguous, and the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation are precise.

Here is an example: " I like programing.".   If the word programing was a command in C++ the computer would not understand it. You on the other hand can understand the word even if its spelled wrong. Computers do not have that ability....yet.

Types of  programming languages.

Low Level Language (machine language): Its the language that  computers like the most. It is understood directly by the CPU because it consists of sequences of binary numbers. Its either one or zero. In other words, its either black or white. Each type of computer has its own machine language. For example the INTEL machine language is different than of the Motorola (used ins Macs) machine language.

Even though machine language is the language that computers "like" the most, they are not friendly to the user. Its an extremely tedious work to write a program in machine language.

Assembly Language : Is the evolution of machine language. It uses English like abbreviated words. Thus making programming a more easy task. Machine language is still present though. Translators convert assembly language into machine language in order for the CPU to understand the set of instructions. Again each type of CPU has its own assembly language.

High Level Language:  These languages resemble human languages and are much easier to learn and maintain. They are more or less independent of a particular type of CPU. high level languages must be translated to machine language in order for the CPU to understand the instructions. A compiler or interpreter is used for this task.

Compilers: Translate high level language directly to machine language.

Interpreters: They can execute high level programs with out compiling those languages into machine languages.