Mimir:Draft3 Chapter1

Back to Table of Contents

=Chapter 1: Introduction= "I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia."

What's in a Language?
Programming languages are the corner stone of all software. They provide software developers with the ability to tell a computer how to run and what tasks it needs to perform.

There is never an arbitrary decision on which programming language to use when beginning a software project. Each language available was created with a specific purpose in mind that the author felt they could not achieve through the use of other languages that were available. It is this fact along with the rapid evolution of computer hardware that have given us the vast amount of programming languages that are available today. Programming languages have and will continue to significantly evolve over the course of time just as their spoken language counterparts have.

Next Chapter