Programming Language Levels?
| DJLad15 (104) |  |
| What are these levels? I've heard of low level and high level languages; is there more? I've also heard that C++ is a low level language. | |
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| EssGeEich (1009) | |
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It is used to say that a low-level language has more access to CPU-Specific operations. You know every program is made of little instructions in machine code. Assembly is the lowest-level language at this time i'd say. Then there are mid-level languages. I'd put C and C++ in here, because I don't find them really low-level, but you can specify inline assembly code. And then the high-level languages. These are the easiest (but most time least performing) languages. They are made to make things easier to programmers. I guess VB is a high-level language? | |
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| DJLad15 (104) | |
| So high level languages would be more human language, and low level languages more like computer language that will be harder for humans to understand if you don't know said language? | |
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| andywestken (1966) | |
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Low versus high also relates to the level of abstraction the language provides. A low level maps more closely to the computer's instruction set and architecture. A high level languages works with more powerful and/or human friendly constructs that must be converted to something the computer understands using a compiler or interpreter. As assembly language is a mnemonic form of the machine instruction set, it's as low as you can get (unless you code the op codes in directly!). I think that C++ is a bit unusual in that it provides quite a high level of abstration (classes, templates, etc) while also letting you get at the lower level stuff (Wikipedia.org refers to it as an intermediary level language). Some high-level prgramming languages provide a powerful abstraction without being anything like human language, like APL and LISP. But they are easier to read than assembly language. Andy PS See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-level_programming_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_programming_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high-level_programming_language | |
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