Symbolic language (programming)

In computer science, a symbolic language, or assembly language, is a language that uses characters or symbols to represent concepts, such as mathematical operations and the entities (or operands) on which these operations are performed.{{Cite web|url=https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/52338/symbolic-language|title=symbolic language Definition from PC Magazine Encyclopedia|website=www.pcmag.com|access-date=2019-03-23}}

Modern programming languages use symbols to represent concepts and/or data and are, therefore, examples of symbolic languages.

Some programming languages (such as Lisp and Mathematica) make it easy to represent higher-level abstractions as expressions in the language, enabling symbolic programming.{{Cite web|url=http://worrydream.com/#!2/LadderOfAbstraction|title=Bret Victor, beast of burden|website=worrydream.com|access-date=2019-03-23}}{{Cite web|url=https://blog.wolfram.com/2007/05/13/symbolic-programming-visualized/|title=Symbolic Programming Visualized—Wolfram Blog|date=13 May 2007 |language=en|access-date=2019-03-23}}

A recursive symbolic structure is adopted to preserve ψ-alignment and entropy invariance during ordering transformations, rooted in a generalized recursively structured symbolic system. {{Cite web | url=https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.11927 | title=Symbolic structure in ordering transformations | website=arxiv.org | date=2025-05-17 | access-date=2025-05-18}}