computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

, a high-level programming language is a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

with strong

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstr ...

from the details of the

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

. In contrast to

low-level programming language A low-level programming language is a programming language that provides little or no Abstraction (computer science), abstraction from a computer's instruction set architecture—commands or functions in the language map that are structurally sim ...

s, it may use

natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...

''elements'', be easier to use, or may automate (or even hide entirely) significant areas of computing systems (e.g.

memory management Memory management is a form of resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when ...

), making the process of developing a program simpler and more understandable than when using a lower-level language. The amount of abstraction provided defines how "high-level" a programming language is. In the 1960s, a high-level programming language using a

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

was commonly called an ''

autocode Autocode is the name of a family of "simplified coding systems", later called programming languages, devised in the 1950s and 1960s for a series of digital computers at the Universities of Manchester, Cambridge and London. Autocode was a generic ...

''. Examples of autocodes are

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...

and Fortran. The first high-level programming language designed for computers was

Plankalkül Plankalkül () is a programming language designed for engineering purposes by Konrad Zuse between 1942 and 1945. It was the first high-level programming language to be designed for a computer. ''Kalkül'' is the German term for a formal system� ...

, created by

Konrad Zuse Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-c ...

. However, it was not implemented in his time, and his original contributions were largely isolated from other developments due to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, aside from the language's influence on the "Superplan" language by

Heinz Rutishauser Heinz Rutishauser (30 January 1918 – 10 November 1970) was a Swiss mathematician and a pioneer of modern numerical mathematics and computer science. Life Rutishauser's father died when he was 13 years old and his mother died three years lat ...

and also to some degree

ALGOL ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...

. The first significantly widespread high-level language was Fortran, a machine-independent development of IBM's earlier

Autocode Autocode is the name of a family of "simplified coding systems", later called programming languages, devised in the 1950s and 1960s for a series of digital computers at the Universities of Manchester, Cambridge and London. Autocode was a generic ...

systems. The

family, with

ALGOL 58 ALGOL 58, originally named IAL, is one of the family of ALGOL computer programming languages. It was an early compromise design soon superseded by ALGOL 60. According to John Backus The Zurich ACM-GAMM Conference had two principal motives in pro ...

defined in 1958 and

ALGOL 60 ALGOL 60 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them, representing a k ...

defined in 1960 by committees of European and American computer scientists, introduced

recursion Recursion (adjective: ''recursive'') occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type. Recursion is used in a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in mathematics ...

as well as nested functions under

lexical scope In computer programming, the scope of a name binding (an association of a name to an entity, such as a variable) is the part of a program where the name binding is valid; that is, where the name can be used to refer to the entity. In other parts ...

. ALGOL 60 was also the first language with a clear distinction between

value Value or values may refer to: Ethics and social * Value (ethics) wherein said concept may be construed as treating actions themselves as abstract objects, associating value to them ** Values (Western philosophy) expands the notion of value beyo ...

and name-parameters and their corresponding

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

. ALGOL also introduced several

structured programming Structured programming is a programming paradigm aimed at improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by making extensive use of the structured control flow constructs of selection ( if/then/else) and repetition ( ...

concepts, such as the while-do and if-then-else constructs and its

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

was the first to be described in formal notation – '' Backus–Naur form'' (BNF). During roughly the same period,

introduced records (also called structs) and

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

introduced a fully general

lambda abstraction Lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable binding and substitution. It is a universal model of computation tha ...

in a programming language for the first time.

Features

"High-level language" refers to the higher level of abstraction from

machine language In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a very ...

. Rather than dealing with registers, memory addresses, and call stacks, high-level languages deal with variables, arrays,

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

s, complex arithmetic or boolean expressions, subroutines and functions, loops, threads, locks, and other abstract computer science concepts, with a focus on

usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a soft ...

over optimal program efficiency. Unlike low-level

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

s, high-level languages have few, if any, language elements that translate directly into a machine's native

opcode In computing, an opcode (abbreviated from operation code, also known as instruction machine code, instruction code, instruction syllable, instruction parcel or opstring) is the portion of a machine language instruction that specifies the operat ...

s. Other features, such as string handling routines, object-oriented language features, and file input/output, may also be present. One thing to note about high-level programming languages is that these languages allow the programmer to be detached and separated from the machine. That is, unlike low-level languages like assembly or machine language, high-level programming can amplify the programmer's instructions and trigger a lot of data movements in the background without their knowledge. The responsibility and power of executing instructions have been handed over to the machine from the programmer.

Abstraction penalty

High-level languages intend to provide features that standardize common tasks, permit rich debugging, and maintain architectural agnosticism; while low-level languages often produce more efficient code through

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

for a specific system architecture. ''Abstraction penalty'' is the cost that high-level programming techniques pay for being unable to optimize performance or use certain hardware because they don't take advantage of certain low-level architectural resources. High-level programming exhibits features like more generic data structures and operations, run-time interpretation, and intermediate code files; which often result in execution of far more operations than necessary, higher memory consumption, and larger binary program size. For this reason, code which needs to run particularly quickly and efficiently may require the use of a lower-level language, even if a higher-level language would make the coding easier. In many cases, critical portions of a program mostly in a high-level language can be hand-coded in

, leading to a much faster, more efficient, or simply reliably functioning optimised program. However, with the growing complexity of modern

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

architectures, well-designed compilers for high-level languages frequently produce code comparable in efficiency to what most low-level programmers can produce by hand, and the higher abstraction may allow for more powerful techniques providing better overall results than their low-level counterparts in particular settings. High-level languages are designed independent of a specific computing system architecture. This facilitates executing a program written in such a language on any computing system with compatible support for the Interpreted or

JIT Jit (also known as jiti, jit-jive and the Harare beat) is a style of popular Zimbabwean dance music. It features a swift rhythm played on drums and accompanied by a guitar. Jit evolved out many diverse influences, including domestic chimurenga, ...

program. High-level languages can be improved as their designers develop improvements. In other cases, new high-level languages evolve from one or more others with the goal of aggregating the most popular constructs with new or improved features. An example of this is Scala which maintains backward compatibility with

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

which means that programs and libraries written in Java will continue to be usable even if a programming shop switches to Scala; this makes the transition easier and the lifespan of such high-level coding indefinite. In contrast, low-level programs rarely survive beyond the system architecture which they were written for without major revision. This is the engineering 'trade-off' for the 'Abstraction Penalty'.

Relative meaning

Examples of high-level programming languages in active use today include

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic (cl ...

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The oracle ...

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the documenECMA-262 ECMAScript is commonly used for client-side scripting o ...

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sa ...

, C#,

and many others. The terms ''high-level'' and ''low-level'' are inherently relative. Some decades ago, the

C language C (''pronounced like the letter c'') is a general-purpose computer programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie, and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities o ...

, and similar languages, were most often considered "high-level", as it supported concepts such as expression evaluation,

parameter A parameter (), generally, is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system (meaning an event, project, object, situation, etc.). That is, a parameter is an element of a system that is useful, or critical, when ...

ised recursive functions, and data types and structures, while

was considered "low-level". Today, many programmers might refer to C as low-level, as it lacks a large runtime-system (no garbage collection, etc.), basically supports only scalar operations, and provides direct memory addressing. It, therefore, readily blends with assembly language and the machine level of CPUs and

microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable i ...

s. Also, in the introduction chapter of

The C Programming Language ''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well as ...

(second edition) by K&R, C is considered as a relatively "low level" language. Assembly language may itself be regarded as a higher level (but often still one-to-one if used without macros) representation of

machine code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a very ...

, as it supports concepts such as constants and (limited) expressions, sometimes even variables, procedures, and

data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, a ...

Machine code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a very ...

, in its turn, is inherently at a slightly higher level than the

microcode In processor design, microcode (μcode) is a technique that interposes a layer of computer organization between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. Microcode is a laye ...

micro-operation In computer central processing units, micro-operations (also known as micro-ops or μops, historically also as micro-actions) are detailed low-level instructions used in some designs to implement complex machine instructions (sometimes termed m ...

s used internally in many processors.

Execution modes

There are three general modes of execution for modern high-level languages: ; Interpreted: When code written in a language is interpreted, its syntax is read and then executed directly, with no compilation stage. A program called an ''interpreter'' reads each program statement, following the program flow, then decides what to do, and does it. A hybrid of an interpreter and a compiler will compile the statement into machine code and execute that; the machine code is then discarded, to be interpreted anew if the line is executed again. Interpreters are commonly the simplest implementations of the behavior of a language, compared to the other two variants listed here. ; Compiled: When code written in a language is

compiled In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

, its syntax is transformed into an executable form before running. There are two types of compilation: :; Machine code generation: Some compilers compile source code directly into

. This is the original mode of compilation, and languages that are directly and completely transformed to machine-native code in this way may be called ''truly compiled'' languages. See

. :; Intermediate representations: When code written in a language is compiled to an

intermediate representation An intermediate representation (IR) is the data structure or code used internally by a compiler or virtual machine to represent source code. An IR is designed to be conducive to further processing, such as optimization and translation. A "good" ...

, that representation can be optimized or saved for later execution without the need to re-read the source file. When the intermediate representation is saved, it may be in a form such as

bytecode Bytecode (also called portable code or p-code) is a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter. Unlike human-readable source code, bytecodes are compact numeric codes, constants, and references (norma ...

. The intermediate representation must then be interpreted or further compiled to execute it.

Virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

s that execute bytecode directly or transform it further into machine code have blurred the once clear distinction between intermediate representations and truly compiled languages. ; Source-to-source translated or transcompiled: Code written in a language may be translated into terms of a lower-level language for which native code compilers are already common.

and the language C are common targets for such translators. See

CoffeeScript CoffeeScript is a programming language that compiles to JavaScript. It adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby, Python, and Haskell in an effort to enhance JavaScript's brevity and readability. Specific additional features include list comprehensio ...

Chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

Scheme, and

Eiffel Eiffel may refer to: Places * Eiffel Peak, a summit in Alberta, Canada * Champ de Mars – Tour Eiffel station, Paris, France; a transit station Structures * Eiffel Tower, in Paris, France, designed by Gustave Eiffel * Eiffel Bridge, Ungheni, M ...

as examples. Specifically, the generated C and C++ code can be seen (as generated from the Eiffel language when using the

EiffelStudio EiffelStudio is a development environment for the Eiffel programming language developed and distributed by Eiffel Software. EiffelStudio includes a combination of tools integrated under a single user interface: compiler, interpreter, debugger, br ...

IDE) in the EIFGENs directory of any compiled Eiffel project. In Eiffel, the ''translated'' process is referred to as transcompiling or transcompiled, and the Eiffel compiler as a transcompiler or

source-to-source compiler A source-to-source translator, source-to-source compiler (S2S compiler), transcompiler, or transpiler is a type of translator that takes the source code of a program written in a programming language as its input and produces an equivalent sou ...

. Note that languages are not strictly ''interpreted'' languages or ''compiled'' languages. Rather, implementations of language behavior use interpreting or compiling. For example,

and Fortran have both been interpreted (even though they were more typically compiled). Similarly, Java shows the difficulty of trying to apply these labels to languages, rather than to implementations; Java is compiled to bytecode which is then executed by either interpreting (in a

Java virtual machine A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describes ...

(JVM)) or compiling (typically with a just-in-time compiler such as HotSpot, again in a JVM). Moreover, compiling, transcompiling, and interpreting is not strictly limited to only a description of the compiler artifact (binary executable or IL assembly).

High-level language computer architecture

Alternatively, it is possible for a high-level language to be directly implemented by a computer – the computer directly executes the HLL code. This is known as a ''

high-level language computer architecture A high-level language computer architecture (HLLCA) is a computer architecture designed to be targeted by a specific high-level programming language (HLL), rather than the architecture being dictated by hardware considerations. It is accordingly al ...

'' – the

computer architecture In computer engineering, computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a more detailed level, t ...

itself is designed to be targeted by a specific high-level language. The

Burroughs large systems The Burroughs Large Systems Group produced a family of large 48-bit mainframes using stack machine instruction sets with dense syllables.E.g., 12-bit syllables for B5000, 8-bit syllables for B6500 The first machine in the family was the B5000 in ...

were target machines for

, for example.

Notes

References

External links

* http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HighLevelLanguage - The

WikiWikiWeb The WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham to accompany the Portland Pattern Repository website discussing software design patterns. The name ''WikiWikiWeb'' origi ...

's article on high-level programming languages {{DEFAULTSORT:High-Level Programming Language Programming language classification