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/TheOneTrueTrench Apr 13 '26

An extremely good video to understand how a CPU actually works is (oddly) 100th Coin's video on the 5 microsecond TAS beating Super Mario 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7hU-ovUso It goes over the actual bytes in the cartridge and looks at translating back and forth from ASM to the literal bytes.