How programming languages are created?

[Nisheeth]

I was curious about how a language is designed. I can, to an extent, guess about how the syntax could have been defined. But it is beyond me that how was it made so that a computer can understand what it means?
I would be grateful if someone were to explain it to me.

[webJose]

I have no direct answer but I can tell you that it is the compiler that understands the code, not the PC. This is why you may have heard before that "compilers produce machine code". It goes along those lines. Eventually all goes down to the hardware and architecture. Intel processors support a series of instructions and Intel provides thick manuals to anyone interested in understanding how to issue these processor instructions; same for AMD.

Happy searching, if nobody answers.

[Nisheeth]

Okay, so that means that one has to make a compiler that can understand the language, so that it is converted to the machine language?

[webJose]

Exactly. The machine doesn't understand Fortran or C or C++. The machine only understands the machine code produced with those respective compilers.

[Nisheeth]

Thanks for explaining...

[cnoeval]

http://forums.devshed.com/beginner-programming-16/how-do-people-create-new-programming-languages-530633.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language

Careful, you can get lost in this topic very quickly...

[Nisheeth]

Thanks..
Those links were really helpful!
especially the one in the devshed forums.