What is a programming language?

What is a programming language?
We can compile (translate) one language into another
The compiler/translator is written in a language
you can make two languages communicate between each other
you can express thoughts and ideas directly
you can express emotions and feeling indirectly

What do you consider the act of programming?
Is it just writing code or can it be used to describe certain types of real world actions, for example conspiring to build circumstances.

the intricasy baffles me and the terms are so unclear.
What are your opinions?

Well, for me, there isn't that much to understand.  As far as I know, computer languages are either compiled or interpreted.  Compiled languages might be crapped out as another language (for example, assembly) but eventually it comes down to machine code and the processor (or many) does the work.

Interpreted languages are parsed and then executed by an interpreter.  An interpreter, I think, is just a particulat program that produces optimized instructions to the processor at run time (assuming the code to be interpreted is syntactically correct and debugged> But I don't have much experience in interpreted languages so things may have changed.

What do you consider the act of programming?
An approach to problem solving.

Turing completeness is a pretty well worn standard for this sort of question.

A miserable little pile of syntax!

But enough talk, have at you!

>>3
Touring.
Also quack.

>>2
maybe you are small minded, I think that you are missing some important issues.

Penis in ass.

>>5

/r/ full quack pasta

fucksake /prog/ be more tripped out about the concept of programming... fags

Baby don't hurt me, no more.

>>1
Magic.
 
In Science, most people actually have a clue, which is clearly not happening. People model and study reality, while here we define how it is.
 
Art is one of the proper tasks of life, and in a way, when we express ourselves in a creative way, we're artists. For example, from the Linux kernel, fs/ufs/ufs_super.c: printk("ufs_read_super: fucking Sun blows me\n"); However, it's hard to argue programming is much of an art. Most of your expressions are about "This piece of shit won't work", "I hate my stupid magazine-reading Java-ass-licking boss", or "I'll make  it work this way, fuck the morons who don't like it".
 
No engineering discipline will ever tolerate the "let's just try it lol" or "I don't understand why this hack works but who cares" culture. fprintf(stderr, "***In SomeFunction, i=%d j=%d lolololol it happened I told you***\n", i, j) is not the usual way an engineer works. Yet engineering is probably what programming has the most in common: rational design of complex systems (even if we nigger rig most of them).
 
But I'm choosing magic, because there are many wonderful things we can do in this business no scientists, artists or engineers can dream of doing. For example, the fact that we can always go back to the previous state. We can try anything with no repercussions other than wasting time. We can clone identical environments. We can simulate things. We can build infinitely complex systems through abstraction, aggregation and iteration, with the only limitation of available storage space and execution time. And we don't need to have the big picture in our minds; in fact the big picture it may not fit any man's mind.

you can express emotions and feeling indirectly
/* Only Sun can take such nice parts and fuck up the programming interface
* like this.  Good job guys...
*/
#define TCVR_RESET_TRIES       16 /* It should reset quickly        */
#define TCVR_UNISOLATE_TRIES   32 /* Dis-isolation can take longer. */