Programming language
![Source code of a simple computer program written in the C programming language, which will output the](/Images/godic/202502/13/C_Hello_World_Program2245.png")
![The Manchester Mark 1 ran programs written in Autocode from 1952.](/Images/godic/202502/13/Manchester_Mark22245.jpg")
![A selection of textbooks that teach programming, in languages both popular and obscure. These are only a few of the thousands of programming languages and dialects that have been designed in history.](/Images/godic/202502/13/Bangalore_India_Tech_books_for_sale_IMG_52612245.jpg")
![Parse tree of Python code with inset tokenization](/Images/godic/202502/13/Python_add5_parse2245.png")
A programming language is a formal constructed language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs to control the behavior of a machine or to express algorithms.
The earliest known programmable machine preceded the invention of the digital computer and is the automatic flute player described in the 9th century by the brothers Musa in Baghdad, at the time a major centre of knowledge. From the early 1800s, "programs" were used to direct the behavior of machines such as Jacquard looms and player pianos. Thousands of different programming languages have been created, mainly in the computer field, and many more still are being created every year. Many programming languages require computation to be specified in an imperative form (i.e., as a sequence of operations to perform), while other languages use other forms of program specification such as the declarative form (i.e. the desired result is specified, not how to achieve it).