Transforming Lives. 
Inventing the Future.
Programming Languages
Just as a people communicate in different languages, based on different systems (i.e. latin based, etc.), computer programmers employ a defined set of rules to communicate with the computer as well as with other programmers. Programming languages define a set of rules, and methodology (i.e. procedural, object-oriented, etc.), a programmer must adhere to when writing computer programs. A computer is only as smart as what a programmer tells it to do, by writing instructions for it. Thus, everything one sees or might not see on the screen, is the result of the hard work of the programmers who created the software. It can be said that programmers are very deliberate and meticulous people; everything that happens on the screen, every action that are being excecuted are intended by the coder. Of course, bugs or logical errors are exceptions to the statement above.
There are many programming languages that one can use: Assembly, Cobol, Python, C, C++, and Java to name a few. Low-level languages, such as Assembly, allow one to communicate 'almost' directly with the underlying hardware. Low-level languages are often cryptic and hard to understand. On the other hand, high-level languages like C++ and Java are 'easier' for beginners to comprehend and program. Often, a computer science major is required to know more than one language (at least more than one programming methodology), the more the better. It can be intimidating to realize how many different languages out there. The fact is that one does not have to know every single programming language that exists. Fortunately, languages developed with the same methodology usually have very similar underlying syntax or constructs. So if one knows a particular language very well, learning another based on the same programming methodology is not too difficult. Java is currently a very popular object-oriented programming language. If you don't know what that object-oriented means... why don't you find out?
Programming Languages Guide - Very good site about programming languages. Easy to comprehend with lots of visualization.
An Introduction to Programming Languages - This is an attempt to summarize some of the basic ideas behind programming languages.
