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Why are high-level languages used in programming?
High-level languages are used in programming because they allow programmers to write code that is more readable, maintainable, and portable. These languages provide a higher level of abstraction, allowing developers to focus on solving problems rather than dealing with low-level details of the computer system.
What are high-level programming languages?
What are some examples of high-level languages?
Some examples of high-level languages include Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, Ruby, and C#. These languages have syntax and structures that are closer to human-readable language, making them easier for programmers to understand and use.
Yes, they're just general terms. It's to do with abstraction, and how close you are to what the computer's actually doing.
Here's a list of programming languages ranging from very low to very high level:
Machine Code could probably be considered the lowest level programming language.
Assembly language is at the level of telling the processor what to do. There is still a conversion step towards machine code.
C is a step up from assembler, because you get to specify what you want to do in slightly more abstract terms, but you're still fairly close to the metal.
C++ does everything that C can do but adds the capability to abstract things away into classes.
Java/C# do similar things to C++ in a way, but without the opportunity to do everything you can do in C (like pointer manipulation in Java's case [thanks Joe!]). They have garbage collection though, which you have to do manually in C++.
Python/Ruby are even higher level, and let you forget about a lot of the details that you would need to specify in something like Java or C#.
SQL is even higher level (it's declarative). Just say "Give me all the items in the table sorted by age" and it will work out the most efficient way to carry this out for you.
low level = long development time + very fast executable file
high level = shorter development time + slower executable file
mid level is between the two
You will find that
many of the truths we cling to depend upon our own point of view.
For a C programmer, Assembler is a low-level language. For a Java programmer, C is a low-level language and so on.
I suspect the folks programming the first stored-program computer with 1s and 0s would have thought Assembler a high-level language. It's all relative.
(Quote from Return of the Jedi)
According to Wikipedia, the low level languages are machine code and assembly.
From the source:
In computer science, a low-level programming language is a programming language that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's instruction set architecture. The word "low" refers to the small or nonexistent amount of abstraction between the language and machine language; because of this, low-level languages are sometimes described as being "close to the hardware."
Then, to answer:
So why does everybody keep mentioning high and low-level languages if assembler is really the only low-level language.
I don't know who "everyone" is, but I would venture a guess that back when high-level languages were not as commonplace as they are today, it was more relevant to talk about low-level vs. high-level (because there was a relatively significant amount of programmers writing assembly code). In modern times it is a less important distinction. Personally, I rarely hear people using these terms except to differentiate between assembly or not (except for those times when you might hear someone raised on Python referring to C or C++ as low-level, but this is not in the spirit of the original definition).