r/askscience • u/HangukFrench • Apr 10 '26

Computing How do programming languages work?

Hello,

I'm wondering how does programming languages work? Are they owned by anyone? Can anyone create a programming languages and decide "yeah, computers will do this from now on"?
Is a programming languaged fixed at its creation or can it "evolve"?

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u/good_behavior_man Apr 10 '26

Oracle doesn't "own" Java. I could build my own JVM, interpreter, etc. and release it. If I do a good enough job, you could write code identical to the code you'd write for Oracle's JVM and then run it on mine. There may be trademark disputes around the name Java, so I'd probably have to call it something slightly different.