A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine (often a computer). Like human languages, programming languages have syntactic and semantic rules used to define meaning. Programming languages are used to facilitate communication about the task of organizing and manipulating information, and to express algorithms precisely. Some authors restrict the term "programming language" to those languages that can express all possible algorithms;In mathematical terms, this means the programming language is Turing-complete sometimes the term "computer language" is used for more limited artificial languages.

Thousands of different programming languagesAs of May 2006 The Encyclopedia of Computer Languages by Murdoch University, Australia lists 8512 computer languages. have been created and new ones are created every year. Few languages ever become sufficiently popular that they are used by more than a few people, but professional programmers may use dozens of different languages during their careers.

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MIT News: Robotics / artificial intelligence

MIT class asks: Fly me to the moon?
Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
An MIT graduate class, aimed at figuring out whether MIT could, or should, mount an entry into the $20-million Google Lunar X-Prize competition announced last fall, has arrived at the bottom line: Yes, we can (technically)!
Beaver-like robots face off in annual MIT contest
Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Robots designed to toss pool-noodle trees into a river of ping-pong balls ruled over competitors focused on rescuing fuzzy toy beavers in this year's 2.007 contest, "Da (yes) MIT, or Save the Baby Beavers," held on Thursday, May 8, at MIT.
Meet Nexi, the Media Lab's latest robot star
Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500
A new experimental robot from the MIT Media Lab can slant its eyebrows in anger, or raise them in surprise, and show a wide assortment of facial expressions to communicate with people in human-centric terms.
Brains informing computers, and vice versa
Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500
After many years, Tomaso Poggio's two parallel lines of research--one aimed at using computers to understand how the brain works, the other at improving the abilities of computers to "think"--have begun to converge.
MIT students design graduate student development program
Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500
An MIT PhD candidate in electrical engineering and computer science will describe a novel professional development program for graduate students and its impact at MIT at the annual meeting of the AAAS in Boston.
MIT finishes fourth in DARPA Grand Challenge
Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500
MIT's automated Land Rover, packed with computers and electronic sensors, finished fourth in the DARPA Grand Challenge. The MIT vehicle, competing for the first time, was one of only six to complete the challenging 55-mile course.

Latest Issue of Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence

Adaptive dynamic probabilistic networks for distributed uncertainty processing
Shi, DongyuYou, Jinyuan
An engineering approach to sociable robots
Deniz, OscarHernandez, MarioLorenzo, JavierCastrillOn, Modesto
Arabic writer identification based on hybrid spectral-statistical measures
Al-Dmour, AymanZitar, Raed Abu

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