Still, programming languages aren't much more than communication aids between you and your computer. Why might that be?

Because computers actually "speak" in the 0's and 1's of machine languageBecause computers can't think

That's it! Because computers use machine language, special programs called compilers have to translate our instructions into a great many 0's and 1's.

Sure, computers can't think, but that's not why you need programming languages.