A system programming language is a programming language used for system programming; such languages are designed for writing system software, which usually requires different development approaches when compared with application software. Edsger Dijkstra refers to these language as Machine Oriented High Order Languages, or mohol.

General-purpose programming languages tend to focus on generic features in order to allow programs written in the language to use the same code on different platforms. Examples of such languages include ALGOL and Pascal. This generic quality typically comes at the cost of denying direct access to the machine’s internal workings, and this often has negative impacts on performance.

System languages, in contrast, are designed not for compatibility but performance and ease of access to the underlying hardware while still providing high-level programming concepts like structured programming. Examples include SPL/3000 and ESPOL, both of which are similar to ALGOL in syntax but tuned to their respective platforms. Others are cross-platform but designed to work close to the hardware, like JOVIAL and BCPL.

Some languages straddle the system and application domains, the canonical example being the C programming language, which is widely used as both a systems and application programming language. Modern languages such as Rust and Swift also bridge the gap between these spaces