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Characteristics of programming language


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Language

Language is used to express one' thought and to understand what others want to say/feel. It is an important component of communication. It is beneficial for humans as well as machines for interaction purpose. Humans use languages like hindi, english, french,gremen, etc. While machines can only understand binary language.
Programming languages are used for machine purpose, mainly computers. It acts as an interface between the user and computer. Computer can only understand binary instructions written in low level language, which is difficult to understand for humans as they use high level/natural language.Some high-level languages are php, python, java, etc.

                                                        Classification of language:

        

Characteristics of programming language

There are many characteristics that a good programming language must have, some of them are listed below:

1. Simplicity: As humans, we love simplicity and we run from complex ones. A good programming language should be simple and easy to use. It must contain simple instructions that is to be followed so that it is easy to remember. A complex programming language is not considered good and can be very difficult to use.

2. Portable: Portability can be referred to a feature called platform independence. A program is said to be portable if it runs in any machine without changing the output of the program, if same input is provided. A good programming language should be portable and should support any operating system.

3. Exception handling: No matter how good a programmer is, his program could consist of errors and exceptions. A good programming language should have its exception handling mechanism for run time errors, this quality is also known as robustness. It is an important feature because when an unexpected input is entered a good PL should know what to do next. Exceptions could include:
*value entered out of bound
*infinite loop, etc.

4. Orthogonality: The term orthogonality indicates the attribute of being able to combine various features of the language in all possible combo, each being meaningful.

5. Abstraction: It refers to the act of displaying essential features without including the background 
(unnecessary) details which reduces the complexity of the program. It is an essential feature of a good programming language because programmers do not need the background details, and it also makes it less complicated. It is also a main feature of object oriented programming languages such as C++.

6. Reliable: Programmers love to use the programming language which according to them is reliable/trustworthy. A program is said to be reliable if it produces same result in any condition when same input is provided. A good programming language should give correct result irrespective to the environment.

7. Syntax: A program is a set of instructions which should consist of logical syntax and grammar. A language's syntax reflects the structure of the program. An error in the program could cause unexpected errors.

8. Program verification: There are so many techniques to check the reliability of the program. A language whose program verification is complex or complicated is not good.

9. Programming environment: A programming environment may consist of coders, testers implementors and so on which can effect the language making it less efficient if it lacks.

10. Modularity: A program is said to be modular if it can be divided into smaller divisions. In programming modularity makes the language more effective and easy to debug.

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