Take a language like Java. How was it originally created? I can’t wrap my head around how someone invented a computer language to run without having some “prior” language that it allows the first lines to function. Is it just Java all the way down, like someone wrote a single line of Java and then every other line was built on that?
What about the first computer language? What was the basis that that functioned on?
Thanks for any help, I hope that was phrased in a mildly intelligible way.
Edit; I’m trying to think of it like human language: at some point there was a first “word” spoken by someone and understood by another and from there the structure started to be born. What were the first “words” on a computer that led to where we are now?
In: Technology
You can think of it as layers of an onion. The lowest layer is machine code – functions of the 0’s and 1’s that computer data is stored as.
The next layer is Assembly language, which is just easier to read machine language – the simple functions of 0’s and 1’s are given a name, and grouped. It, like the machine language are specific to the computer chip that will run the program.
The next layer toward JAVA is C++, (which derived from the C programming language), and now it is no longer computer chip specific, it is a general language used to write code for any computer. You run this code through a “compiler”, that converts the C++ into the machine specific assembly language.
The outer layer is the JAVA, which is an easier to use language than the C++. Think of this like a paragraph of C++ does what you want, but you can just give that paragraph a JAVA name, like “A”. Instead of writing all that C++ to do the function you want, you just say in JAVA “do A”.
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