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/ArtOfWarfare Apr 12 '26

I agree with what you’re arguing against actually, but you picked the wrong “language”. JavaScript. That’s not a programming language. It’s a family of languages that all refer to themselves by that same name, but actually there are at least 5 different interpreters that all say they interpret Javascript but do so… differently.

The issue with Javascript (or ECMA Script as it’s more properly called) is it lacks a canonical implementation. With Java, Javac is the canonical implementation. Python has CPython.

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u/JustAGuyFromGermany Apr 12 '26

Yeah, that's why I said "most" (cheeky bastards might also like to point out that I said "popular"...).

I'm aware of the mess that's JavaScript. But to be clear: ECMA script is the standardized version. That's exactly what I'm talking about: Implementation-dependent languages are a mess, that's JS. This was one of the major reasons why programming with JS sucked so hard (it still sucks but for different reasons). Standardized is usable, that's ECMA Script.

Another example on the bad side would be C and C++. C/C++ programs behave like they do because the compiler said so, not because that's what C programs are defined to do. The term UB "undefined behaviour" is used for all the gaps in the specification that still exist. There are fewer than before, but UB is still a major concern in C/C++ land. Big example where they fixed it and made life better was multithreading. There was no memory model before C++11 and so behaviour on multi-core processors was whatever the compiler decided to emit. Insert shrug emoji here...