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Programming languages are the languages with which a programmer implements a piece of software to run on a computer. The earliest programming languages were assembly languages, not far removed from the binary-encoded instructions directly executed by the computer. By the mid-1950s, programmers began to use higher-level languages. Two of the first higher-level languages were FORTRAN (Formula Translator) and ALGOL (Algorithmic Language), which allowed programmers to write algebraic expressions and solve scientific computing problems. As learning...