programming language

noun

plural programming languages

: any of various languages (see language sense 1c) used to create computer programs

Programming languages are the foundation of software development, allowing developers to create applications, websites, and systems through computer-understandable instructions.

—geeksforgeeks.org

Most software engineers do far more than churn out code, designing products, choosing programming languages, troubleshooting problems and gathering feedback from users.

—Steve Lohr

Maintaining the system is getting harder because it relies on a computer programming language (COBOL) that fewer and fewer programmers know.

—David Zubler

compare assembly language, machine language, natural language sense 2

Examples of programming language in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But according to the post, OpenAI opted to keep it secret until the company could code it into Lean, a programming language that helps ensure mathematical correctness. — Joseph Howlett, Scientific American, 27 Oct. 2026

On Wednesday, October 21, two serious security vulnerabilities were revealed in PHP, the programming language behind more than 70% of the internet’s web pages. — Julia Black, Vanity Fair, 27 Oct. 2026

Word of the vulnerability comes six days after another botched disclosure, this one involving a critical code-execution vulnerability in the PHP programming language. — Dan Goodin, ArsTechnica, 27 Oct. 2026

The researchers’ environment looks broadly comparable to the popular game Roblox and uses the same programming language. — Will McCurdy, PC Magazine, 26 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1959, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for programming language

• interlanguage
• metalanguage