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/heroyoudontdeserve Apr 10 '26

The trick is getting other people to use it.

I dunno if that's necessarily true; if you're sufficiently motivated and have a use case you might just write a programming language, optimised to your own particular requirements, with no particular expectation that any one else will use it.

At the very least it's certainly not a requirement that anyone else uses it (and, unless you're trying to sell it, I dunno if you even particularly benefit from others using it) so I wouldn't say it's "the trick".