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Computer Languages

Computer languages have evolved from low-level machine languages to high-level languages that are easier for humans to understand. Machine language uses only 1s and 0s and is directly understood by computers but difficult for humans. Assembly language uses mnemonics instead of 1s and 0s and requires an assembler to translate it to machine language. High-level languages are the most human-friendly but require compilers or interpreters to convert them into machine-readable code.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

64 views13 pages

Computer Languages

Uploaded by

Lakhindra Ray

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Computer Languages

Over the years, computer languages have

been evolved from Low-Level to High-Level
Languages. In the earliest days of computers,
only Binary Language was used to write
programs. The computer languages are
classified as follows:
Machine Language (low level
language)
Machine language is the low level
programming language. Low-Level language
is the only language which can be
understood by the computer. Low-level
language is also known as Machine
Language.

The machine language contains only two

symbols 1 & 0. All the instructions of
machine language are written in the form of
binary numbers 1's & 0's. A computer can
directly understand the machine language.

Machine language is very difficult to

understand by the human beings.
Modifications and error fixing cannot be
done in machine language.

Machine language is very difficult to

memorize so it is not possible to learn the
machine language.

Execution is fast in machine language

because all data is already present in binary
format.

There is no need of translator. The machine

understandable form is the machine
language.

Machine language is hardware dependent.

Assembly Language (middle level
language)

Middle-level language is a computer language in

which the instructions are created using symbols
such as letters, digits and special characters.

Assembly language is an example of middle-level

language. In assembly language, we use
predefined words called mnemonics such as Mov,
Add, Sub, End etc.

Binary code instructions in low-level language are

replaced with mnemonics and operands in middle-
level language.

But the computer cannot understand mnemonics,

so we use a translator called Assembler to
translate mnemonics into machine language.
Assembler is a translator which takes assembly
code as input and produces machine code as
output.

That means, the computer cannot understand

middle-level language, so it needs to be
translated into a low-level language to make it
understandable by the computer.

 Assembler is used to translate middle-level

language into low-level language.

Assembly language is easy to understand by the

human being as compare to machine language.
 Modifications and error fixing can be done in
assembly language.

 Easy to memorize the assembly language

because some alphabets and mnemonics are
used.

 Execution is slow as compared to machine

language.

 Assembler is used as translator to convert

mnemonics into machine understandable
form.

 Assembly language is the machine dependent

and it is not portable.
High Level Language
High-level language is a computer language which
can be understood by the users. The high-level
language is very similar to human languages and
has a set of grammar rules that are used to make
instructions more easily.

Every high-level language has a set of predefined

words known as Keywords and a set of rules
known as Syntax to create instructions.

 The high-level language is easier to understand

for the users but the computer cannot
understand it.

High-level language needs to be converted into

the low-level language to make it understandable
by the computer.
We use Compiler or interpreter to convert
high-level language to low-level language.

Languages like FORTRAN,C, C++, JAVA,

Python, etc., are examples of high-level
languages.

All these programming languages use human-

understandable language like English to write
program instructions.

 These instructions are converted to low-

level language by the compiler or interpreter
so that it can be understood by the
computer.
What is a Compiler?
A compiler is a translator that produces an
output of low-level language (like an
assembly or machine language) by taking an
input of high-level language such as
FORTRAN, PL/I, COBOL, etc.

It is basically a computer program used to

transform codes written in a programming
language into machine code (human-readable
code to a binary 0 and 1 bits language for a
computer processor to understand).

The computer then processes the machine

code for performing the corresponding
tasks.
Advantages of Compiler

 A compiler translates a program in a

single run.

 It consumes less time.

 CPU utilization is more.

 Both syntactic and semantic errors can be

checked concurrently.

 It is easily supported by many high-level

languages like C, C++, JAVA, etc.
What is Interpreter ?
An interpreter is a program that executes
the programming code directly instead of
just translating it into another format.