There are indeed many computer
programming languages in the world of computers. Let’s run
through some of them here.

Assembly
Language

Assembly language is one
step beyond the cryptic machine language. Assembly was
created quickly as programmers learned the shortcomings of
programming in binary. The series of Assembly languages
appeared in the 1950s and were designed to be a little more
user friendly. Assembly introduced the concept of the
variable, where one can assign a symbol to a particular
location in memory rather than having to re-type the
location in binary every single time. It also contained some
pseudo-operations, where one could represent typical op
codes in statement form rather than binary. After a
programmer writes an Assembly program, he must then run it
through the Assembler. The Assembler is like a compiler and
translated the Assembly program into the regular machine
language.

Fortran

Fortran is the oldest
high-level programming language, developed in the 1950s. It
is short for Formula Translator. Fortran has many versions.
Fortran IV is an early one, made standard in 1966.
Fortran-77 has a number of newer features. More recently,
Fortran-90 was developed. There are also other renditions,
such as F, which is a mix between Fortran and
module-oriented languages, and High Performance Fortran.
Fortran is a pretty cut-and-dry language. It is not much
used anymore except in scientific circles where programs may
perform many math calculations. But, since it is a good into
to the logic of programming, it is also used in some college
courses still as an intro to the subject of programming.

Pascal

A high-level programming
language developed by Niklaus Wirth in the 1960s. It is
named after a French mathematician. Pascal is known to be
very structured and programmers must design Pascal programs
very methodically and carefully. For this reason, it is used
as a teaching tool. But, that is pretty much where its use
stops now. The language is too inflexible and lacks
features, making it bad for business applications. Due to
this, Wirth developed Modula-2, another programming
languages similar to Pascal but having more features.

Cobol

Short for Common Business
Oriented Language. It was developed in the late 1950s and is the
second oldest high-level language (Fortran is the oldest). Cobol
is geared toward the business world. It is a very wordy
language. Programs in Cobol are typically longer than programs
in other languages. It is a good language, though, and it is
easy to read. Many claim it is out-dated now, but it is still in
heavy use in the business world and is widely used.

C

C is a high-level programming
language developed in Bell Labs in the mid 1970s. It was
designed to be a systems programming language, but it has shown
itself to be a very flexible language. It was used to write the
Unix operating system. Unix used to be written in Assembly
language, but was re-written in C in order to make it easier and
provide more features. The fact that Unix is written in C has
been a major catalyst for the language, since Unix is very much
geared to support C programs, obviously. C is the closest to
Assembly than any other high-level language.  The
statements and features make it great for many applications, but
the language is also very low-level and can be used to deal with
the hardware directly. Since it is very close to machine
language in its control of the system, programmers can write
very efficient code in C.

C++

A revision to the original C
developed in the 1980s. C++ has all the features of C but
provides some more efficient operations and object-oriented
features. C++ is probably the most popular and hip language
right now and is used for many Windows and Mac programs. Tools
such as Borland and Visual C++ are used to program in the
language and usually come with compilers.

Java

A high-level language developed
by Sun Microsystems. It is an object-oriented language like C++,
but is simplified so that many common errors can be avoided.
Java code is compiled into bytecode and compiled applications
have a .class extension. They are run by a Java interpreter.
Since these interpreters, called Virtual Machines, exist more
most operating systems, Java code can be run on computers with
different operating systems. It is a general purpose language,
but has features well suited for Internet use and is used quite
frequently.

Other Languages

There are tons of other
languages out there, all having different features. Perl, SQL
and HTML are other common ones, but are designed for special
purposes. ADA is a highly refined language with strong
multi-processing capabilities. It is a very strong language and
was mandated to be used in the Department of Defense of the US.

Programming languages differ
only by features and ease of programming. They are all developed
by companies for some purpose. But, regardless the language
used, all programs are compiled into machine language and run in
binary at that level, the ONLY language the machine can
understand.