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Programming languages don't actually require any memory as such. A programming language is nothing more than a specification that determines how source code needs to be composed in order to be translated into machine code. That specification could easily be defined in a book which obviously requires no memory. These days, however, language documentation is generally available online, so the amount of memory required is usually limited only to the page or pages you're currently reading (excluding the memory required by your internet browser or document reader of course).

However, aside from the language documentation, a programming language also requires a compiler and/or interpreter to perform the physical translation from source code to machine code. A compiler is only required during compilation; once code is compiled to machine code or byte code the compiler is no longer required. However, non-compiled programming languages or languages that only compile to byte code have to be interpreted and the interpreter must remain in memory in order to execute the code. Java is a typical example because code is compiled to byte code suitable for interpretation by the Java virtual machine.

The actual amount of memory required by the compiler or interpreter will vary from language to language and even from implementation to implementation of the same language. For instance, the gcc compiler and the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler both compile C++ code, but the implementations are completely different and are unlikely to consume the same amount of memory. Moreover, gcc for the Mac and gcc for the PC are completely different implementations of the same implementation!

Language implementations also generally provide additional tools including debuggers, resource managers, code editors and so on. Many also provide an integrated development environment to bring all the tools together. These tools are not strictly part of the language specification, but they do consume memory. Unfortunately, there is no way to generalise the amount of memory physically required by any development environment as it all depends on the tools you use.

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