Computers help us to solve problems with machine learning; like solving mathematical equations, tracking satellites, mobile phones communication, etc. In early days, a computer was a basic calculator and took hours to compute simple math problems. Over time, computers evolved and started to operate and control the information with computer programming and even further machine learning started helping to utilize large amounts of data with computational methods. So, how does the computer understand what to perform and in what order?
Computer uses the code (instructions given to the computer) to solve problems and perform given tasks in required order. Writing a code is the simple meaning of coding. The coder is the person who writes the codes by utilizing various languages, such as; javascript, C++, Python, HTML, CSS, etc. Depending on your project objectives, like creating a website, data analytics, computer apps,…etc., you will choose a coding language to use. Different languages have different purposes and different types. Let’s go through the differences between the three different types of languages; programming, scripting and markup languages.
Programming language: Set of code (or we can say instructions) tells a computer what needs to be done to complete a task and get an output. It mainly refers to a high level language (written in simple English words then converted to machine level language) then a low level language (it is in machine level language, represented in binary code, 0 or 1).
Scripting language: It is a sub-category of programming language to guide or control the other program. It connects one language to another.
Markup language: It prepares a structure, formatting, and presentation of the data. These languages are mostly used to design a website.
Figure 1. Examples for programming, scripting and markup languages
At the beginning, coding was very basic, but once it started, it really took off very fast and kept going! The coding started before the computer to process punch cards to create patterns for textile designs in the 1800s. Further, many programmers contributed to shape the way forward for the coding. Ada Lovelace is the first computer programmer in history. The following table gives a basic summary and goes through some of the well known coding languages timeline in the history with some contents.
Table 1. Timeline of coding languages with brief information
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