A programming language or computer language is a language that is used by a programmer or developer to interact with a computer system. The programmer writes instructions and executes them to carry out some tasks. Broadly we can categorize programming languages into high-level and low-level programming languages.
So what are the differences between these two? We will discuss the same in this article.
Low-level programming language
A low-level programming language provides little or no abstraction to the computer’s instruction set architecture which means code written in a low-level language runs directly without the need of a compiler or interpreter.
Low-level programming generally refers to machine code or assembly language. The code written in a low-level language is machine-dependent and considered as close to the hardware.
We can further classify low-level language into –
- Machine language (0, 1)
- Assembly language
High-level programming language
A high-level language provides a strong abstraction to the computer’s instruction set architecture which means details of the computer are hidden from the programmer or outer world. These languages use a program to translate their instruction into low low-level or machine code called compiler or interpreter.
The code written in a high-level language is generally machine-independent so code written on one machine can be executed on another one. The benefit of using a high-level programming language is that easy to code, understand, and maintain a program.
For example – Python, Java, C++, C, PHP, etc.
We can further classify them into –
- Procedural programming (e.g. – C Programming, Fortran)
- Object-oriented programming ( e.g. – Java, Python, etc)
Note: – C and C++ are considered as middle-level programming languages as these languages use features of high-level programming languages and are also closely related to the machine
The key differences between high-level and low-level programming language
The following table shows the key differences between high-level and low-level programming languages.
Conclusion
I hope now you know the differences between high-level and low-level programming languages. Now if you have a query then write us in the comments below.