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 **__PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: __ **

Many people have never heard of, not to say know what a programming language is. I will be telling you a bit about programming languages and detailing a few specifically.

A programming language is a technical language designed to give instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behaviour of a machine and to make them follow given instructions. Programming languages are a set of instructions that are changed into a mechanical code so that the computer can understand them and ultimately fulfil the instructions. Your computer is always following instructions from the moment you turn it on, this is all because of programming languages.

Different languages reflect the different needs of various applications, and make writing programs for those applications easier and faster to use. For example, if you want to write business programs, then you don't want to concentrate on all kinds of scientific concepts. If you want to write a program for medical billing, you will be wasting your time including code that will edit music or digital photographs. Here are a few different types of computer languages...

**HTML ** Hyper Text Markup Language is the primary language of the World Wide Web that is used to define the structure and layout of web pages by using various tags and attributes. Although an important language of the web, the content created with HTML does not change. HTML is used to identify the content a webpage will contain, not how the page functions

**C++ ** C++ is an object-oriented programming language that is viewed by many as the best language for creating large-scale applications. C++ is a superset of the C language.  Java is a related programming language that is based on C++ but improved the distribution of program objects in a network such as the Internet. Java is somewhat simpler and easier to learn than C++ and has characteristics that give it other advantages over C++. However, both languages require a large amount of study.

**C ** C is a structured, procedural programming language that has been widely used both for operating systems and applications and that has had a wide following in the academic community. C is rapidly being replaced by C++.

**XML ** <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Extensible Mark-up Language is a language developed by the W3C which works like HTML, it allows for custom tags that are defined by programmers. XML allows the spread of data between applications and organizations through the use of its custom tags.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Java ** <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">A language created by Sun MicroSystems that can be used to create applets, a program that is performed from within another program. The applets run inside webpages as well as software applications. Things you can do with Java include working together with the user by creating graphical programs and reading from files. Java is often confused with JavaScript, but they are two different languages.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">JavaScript ** <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">A language made by Netscape. With JavaScript it is possible to communicate with HTML, create animations, create calculators and confirm forms.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">VBScript ** <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Visual Basic Scripting Edition is based on Visual Basic but is much simpler. VBScript is a language developed by Microsoft that works only in Microsoft's Internet Explorer and web browsers based on Internet Explorer. VBScript can be used to print dates, make calculations and interact with the user.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">PHP ** <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">PHP stands for Hypertext Pre-processor and was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. PHP is a powerful language used for many tasks such as data encryption, database access and form confirmation.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Bibliography **

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">[|www.google.co.za] ** **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">[|wiki.answers.com] **