What are five major differences between a high level programming language and a low-level programming language?

Difference Between High-Level Languages and Low-Level Language

Computers have become an integral and essential part of our lives and lifestyle. It understands all instructions through languages that we call programs. We give all our instructions to the computer via programs to get them to perform specific tasks.

Computer programs can be further categorized into two broad types. They are low-level languages and high-level languages. Here we would try to understand them and the major differences between them. Read on!

Examples of a high-level language 

Following are all examples of a high-level language. To convert them into machine-language, compilers are used.

Examples of low-level language

There are only two types of low-level language are-

• Assembly Language
• Machine Code.

Now, let us differentiate these two. What is high level language and What is low level Language?

We start by defining the two terms first. A high-level language is more human-friendly. They are machine-independent, portable, and better understood by humans and programmers. They are crafted by combining mathematical symbols and natural language symbols and characters. Based more on real-world scenarios; they are implemented primarily for the development of a program. These languages do not need to memorize the architecture and registers of a CPU. They are easy to debug, maintain, and used for building various applications.

In contrast, low-level languages are machine-dependent as they decide how the hardware elements of the computer would interact. These resemble the native binary language of the computer and thus are difficult for programmers to understand. These require extensive knowledge of the hardware components of a computer and their configuration. These are non-portable, difficult to debug, and highly prone to incautious errors. A tiresome and time-consuming task; the language is defined by the hardware design.

From here, we start comparing the two languages. First, we talk about the platform that here implies the Computer hardware or its Configuration. The definition has made it evident that it is the low-level language that is platform-dependent. They can run on the same hardware with the specified configuration. If you change the hardware configuration; they would not run.

In contrast, high-level languages are platform-independent and can run on all types of hardware with different configurations. Simultaneously, it must be noted that even though they are system hardware configuration independent; they are not operating system independent.

Because low-level language is written in binary or assembly language; they have fewer syntaxes, keywords, functions, and class libraries. Consequently, they do not need any compilation or interpretation and can interact directly with the memory and registers.

In contrast, high-level language uses English statements which are like human language. Thus, they cannot interact directly with the computer hardware like the memory and registers of the computer and require a compiler or an interpreter that translates them to machine language.

From the above arguments; it is evident that low-level language exhibits a faster speed.

Low-level languages are more memory-efficient and consume far less memory than high-level languages. Most of the time, high-level languages run inside a specific runtime environment. Moreover, several other programs run concurrently to increase its optimal efficiency. All this takes the memory consumption notches higher for a high-level language.

High-level languages closely resemble human languages. It is much easier to remember English statements than a computer language. The low-level language is machine-friendly and has just two types. The first is the binary language that has only 0’s and 1’s. The other language is the Assembly language a type of symbol called mnemonics. Learning its different sets of instructions for different architecture is almost close to impossible. Moreover, to assimilate and learn this language, you need to have the knowledge and experience of the specific machine architecture.

Thus, we can conclude that high-level languages are not only easy to understand and memorize but also easy to read, write and modify.

Low-level languages are machine-dependent and thus different for different architectures. Thus, they are not portable.

But high-level languages comprise English statements that need a compiler or interpreter to convert them to machine language. You need to use different compilers for different machine architectures and to the source to its specific machine language. Thus, high-level languages are portable.

Speed and performance and directly proportional and thus the performance of higher speed language, i.e. the low-level languages are better compared to the higher-level languages.

The low-level language resembles closely to the language of the computer and thus, they show less or no abstraction from the hardware. In contrast, the high-level language runs on top of the machine language. They interact with the hardware via the layers of the operating system and other software. Thus, high-level language exhibits a higher layer of abstraction.

High-level languages are much easier and more flexible to handle than low-level languages. Compared to low-level language, they have huge libraries with a dense set of keywords, Data types, functions, etc. Thus, they can be easily developed with far fewer resources and effort. This flexibility is absent in low-level languages and is difficult and inflexible to handle.

• Debugging and maintenance

Be it a small syntactical error or big memory leaks; detecting them or maintaining them is a more tedious and time-consuming process in a low-level language. Moreover, they are more error-prone and difficult to debug.

In contrast, high-level languages show fewer errors. Nearly all of their syntactical errors can be identified by the compilers and interpreters and can be fixed. They are also easy to maintain as well as debug

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You find far less support for low-level languages than high-level languages. The number of professionals for low-level languages pales in comparison to the number of professionals available for high-level ones.

Because of their virtues and traits like high speed, no abstraction, and direct communication with the hardware, low-level languages are generally used to develop all kinds of operating systems and their embedded systems.

In contrast, high-level languages are used to develop a plethora of applications like utility software, desktop applications, websites, mobile applications, etc.

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What are the advantages of high-level language over low-level language?

By now, it is evident that high-level languages are more advantageous than low-level languages. They are:

• More user-friendly
• Provide a better user interface
• Helps programmers use a more modular approach
• Are easier and faster to code and debug
• Increases the programmer’s productivity

Wrapping up

We hope that by now you can clearly understand the difference between the two types of computer languages and their various applications. However, we need both to make the maximum and most efficient use of computers.

Content: High-Level language and Low-Level language

1. 1. Comparison Chart
   2. Definition
   3. Key Differences
   4. Conclusion

Comparison Chart

Definition of High-Level language

High-level languages are the programming languages constructed by a combination of mathematical symbols, natural language characters and symbols and modelled by real-world scenarios. In a general way, modern procedure-oriented programming languages are known as high-level languages. These are mainly implemented for the fast and easier development of a program. It does not require to memorize the architecture and registers of a CPU for the development of a program. The compilers are used to translate the high-level language program into machine language. There are various high-level languages like COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, C and C++, Java, etcetera.

To get an idea about the high-level language, let’s take an example of online shopping. When a user wants to buy something online he/she selects the items and add it to the cart to buy it, then chooses for payment methods. Payment methods include net banking, debit card, credit card or (COD) cash on delivery. The details of the account holder are checked and verified against the bank’s database in the payment gateway. At last, the transaction takes place and the order is placed which is delivered within a few days.

The above activity can be interpreted in a high-level programming language in a below-given manner:

Definition of Low-Level language

The low-level language is considered as low because it goes to the machine level and can determine how hardware elements of the computer actually interact. These low-level languages need a wide knowledge of the hardware components and their configuration. Machine level language and assembly language are classified under low-level languages.

Machine Language is considered as the computer’s natural language, which can be directly recognized by the electronic machines. It is a non-portable and machine dependent language which consist of only two binary numbers 0’s and 1’s. Each instruction in a computer exists in the form of binary code. However, it is quite hard to give instructions to a computer in a binary language which means to interact with a computer in a binary language or writing programs in machine level language. The writing, testing and debugging speed in machine language is slow and incautious errors are very common. The machine language is defined by the hardware design of that hardware platform. It is tiresome and time-consuming.

Another variant of low-level language is assembly language. In this language programmers uses commands which slightly resembles to common English that is understandable to some extent and interpreted by programmers. Programs are constructed using alphanumeric symbols (also known as mnemonics) instead of 0’s and 1’s. It includes ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV, RLC and RAL as the symbols or mnemonics.

Although each program written in a language other than the machine language is translated into machine language. Assembler is used to perform such operations in order to translate the non-machine language into machine language. Every processor is enabled with its own assembly language such as 8085, 8086, 80186 processors have their own assembly language.

Key Differences Between High-Level language and Low-Level language

1. The high-level language is programmer friendly. On the contrary, low-level language is machine amiable which means it is interpreted by machines easily.
2. Low-level languages take time to execute whereas high-level languages execute at a faster pace.
3. High-level languages are converted into machine specific language with the help of a compiler. As against, with low-level languages, only an assembler is needed for assembly language.
4. When it comes to memory consumption the low-level languages are highly efficient while high-level languages are not.
5. A high-level language is easily understandable whereas low-level language cannot be interpreted easily as it contains a set of long series of 0’s and 1’s.
6. Low-level languages cannot run over different machines as these are not- portable and machine independent. In contrast, the programs written in high-level languages are portable and machine independent.
7. Debugging and maintenance are easier and high-level languages as compared to low-level languages.

Conclusion

The low-level languages are mainly used to construct less operational application where simple and specific functions are required such as CNC machine, electronic devices etcetera. On the other hand, high-level languages are used to build operation extensive applications where a long sequence of functions are carried out like softwares used in hospitals, industries and factories etcetera.