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programming_language.md
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@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ Another common division is by **level of [abstraction](abstraction.md)** roughly
We can divide language in many more ways, for example based on their **[paradigm](paradigm.md)** (roughly its core idea/model/"philosophy", e.g. [impertaive](imperative.md), [declarative](declarative.md), [object-oriented](oop.md), [functional](functional.md), [logical](logical.md), ...), **purpose** (general purpose, special purpose), computational power ([turing complete](turing_complete.md) or weaker, many definitions of a programming language require Turing completeness), [typing](data_type.md) (strong, weak, dynamic, static) or function evaluation (strict, lazy).
A computer language consists from two main parts:
A computer language consists of two main parts:
- **[syntax](syntax.md)**: The grammar rules and words, i.e. how the language "looks", what expressions we are allowed to write in it. Syntax says which words can follow other words, if indentation has to follow some rules, how to insert comments in the source code, what format numbers can be written in, what kinds of names variables can have etc. Syntax is the surface part, it's often considered not as important or hard as semantics (e.g. syntax errors aren't really a big deal as the language processor immediately catches them and we correct them easily), but a good design of syntax is nevertheless still very important because that's what the programmer actually deals with a great amount of time.
- **[semantics](semantics)**: The meaning of what we write, i.e. semantics says what the syntax actually stands for. E.g. when syntax says it is possible to write `a / b`, semantics says this means the mathematical operation of division and furthermore specifies what *a* and *b* can actually be, what happens if *b* is zero etc. Semantics is the deeper part as firstly it is more difficult to define and secondly it gives the language its [features](feature.md), its power to compute, usability, it can make the language robust or prone to errors, it can make it efficient or slow, easy and hard to compile, optimize etc.
@ -141,7 +141,7 @@ TODO: Tcl, Rebol
## Interesting Languages
Some programming languages may be [interesting](interesting.md) rather than directly useful, however these are important too as they teach us a lot and may help us design good practically usable languages. In fact professional researches in theory of computation spend their whole lives dealing with practically unusable languages and purely theoretical computers.
Some programming languages may be [interesting](interesting.md) rather than directly useful -- following this trail may lead you to more obscure and underground programming communities -- however these languages are important too as they teach us a lot and may help us design good practically usable languages. In fact professional researches in theory of computation spend their whole lives dealing with practically unusable languages and purely theoretical computers. Even a great painter sometimes draws funny silly pictures in his notebook, it helps build a wide relationship with the art and you never know if a serious idea can be spotted in a joke.
One such language is e.g. **[Unary](unary_lang.md)**, a programming language that only uses a single character while being Turing complete (i.e. having the highest possible "computing power", being able to express any program). All programs in Unary are just sequences of one character, differing only by their length (i.e. a program can also be seen just as a single natural number, the length of the sequence). We can do this because we can make an ordered list of all (infinitely many) possible programs in some simple programming language (such as a [Turing machine](turing_machine.md) or [Brainfuck](brainfuck.md)), i.e. assign each program its ordinal number (1st, 2nd, 3rd, ...) -- then to express a program we simply say the position of the program on the list.
@ -151,5 +151,7 @@ There is a community around so called **[esoteric programming languages](esolang
- [esoteric programming language](esolang.md)
- [constructed language](conlang.md)
- [human language](human_language.md)
- [computer language](computer_language.md)
- [pseudocode](pseudocode.md)
- [compiler](compiler.md)