What makes a language?

We can say that each language (machine or natural, it doesn't matter) consists of the following elements:

• an alphabet: a set of symbols used to build words of a certain language (e.g., the Latin alphabet for English, the Cyrillic alphabet for Russian, Kanji for Japanese, and so on)
• a lexis: (aka a dictionary) a set of words the language offers its users (e.g., the word "computer" comes from the English language dictionary, while "cmoptrue" doesn't; the word "chat" is present both in English and French dictionaries, but their meanings are different)
• a syntax: a set of rules (formal or informal, written or felt intuitively) used to determine if a certain string of words forms a valid sentence (e.g., "I am a python" is a syntactically correct phrase, while "I a python am" isn't)
• semantics: a set of rules determining if a certain phrase makes sense (e.g., "I ate a doughnut" makes sense, but "A doughnut ate me" doesn't)

The IL is, in fact, the alphabet of a machine language. This is the simplest and most primary set of symbols we can use to give commands to a computer. It's the computer's mother tongue.

Unfortunately, this mother tongue is a far cry from a human mother tongue. We both ( computers and humans) need something else, a common language for computers and humans, or a bridge between the two different worlds.

We need a language in which humans can write their programs and a language that computers may use to execute the programs, one that is far more complex than machine language and yet far simpler than natural language.

Such languages are often called high-level programming languages. They are at least somewhat similar to natural ones in that they use symbols, words and conventions readable to humans. These languages enable humans to express commands to computers that are much more complex than those offered by ILs.

A program written in a high-level programming language is called a source code (in contrast to the machine code executed by computers). Similarly, the file containing the source code is called the source file.