High-Level Vs. Low-Level Languages: Find What is the Difference Between High-Level and Low-Level Languages?
Both of these are types of programming languages that provide a set of instructions to a system for performing certain tasks. Though both of these have specific purposes, they vary in various ways. In this article, we will discuss the difference between high-level and low-level languages. But before that, let us first know more about programming languages and their purpose.
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What is a Programming Language?
Programming languages define and compile a set of instructions for the CPU (Central Processing Unit) for performing any specific task. Every programming language has a set of keywords along with syntax- that it uses for creating instructions.
Difference Between High-Level and Low-Level Languages PDF
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Till now, thousands of programming languages have come into form. All of them have their own specific purposes. All of these languages have a variation in terms of the level of abstraction that they all provide from the hardware. A few of these languages provide less or no abstraction at all, while the others provide a very high abstraction. On the basis of this level of abstraction, there are two types of programming languages:
- Low-level language
- High-level language
The primary difference between low and high-level languages is that any programmer can understand, compile, and interpret a high-level language feasibly as compared to the machine. The machines, on the other hand, are capable of understanding the low-level language more feasibly compared to human beings.
What are High-Level Languages?
- One can easily interpret and combine these languages as compared to the low-level languages.
- They are very easy to understand.
- Such languages are programmer-friendly.
- Debugging is not very difficult.
- They come with easy maintenance and are thus simple and manageable.
- One can easily run them on different platforms.
- They require a compiler/interpreter for translation into a machine code.
- A user can port them from one location to another.
- Such languages have a low efficiency of memory. So it consumes more memory than the low-level languages.
- They are very widely used and popular in today’s times.
- Java, C, C++, Python, etc., are a few examples of high-level languages.
What are Low-Level Languages?
- They are also called machine-level languages.
- Machines can easily understand it.
- High-level languages are very machine-friendly.
- Debugging them is very difficult.
- They are not very easy to understand.
- All the languages come with complex maintenance.
- They are not portable.
- These languages depend on machines. Thus, one can run it on various platforms.
- They always require assemblers for translating instructions.
- Low-level languages do not have a very wide application in today’s times.
Difference Between High-Level and Low-Level Languages
| Parameter | High-Level Language | Low-Level Language |
| Basic | These are programmer-friendly languages that are manageable, easy to understand, debug, and widely used in today’s times. | These are machine-friendly languages that are very difficult to understand by human beings but easy to interpret by machines. |
| Ease of Execution | These are very easy to execute. | These are very difficult to execute. |
| Process of Translation | High-level languages require the use of a compiler or an interpreter for their translation into the machine code. | Low-level language requires an assembler for directly translating the instructions of the machine language. |
| Efficiency of Memory | These languages have a very low memory efficiency. It means that they consume more memory than any low-level language. | These languages have a very high memory efficiency. It means that they consume less energy as compared to any high-level language. |
| Portability | These are portable from any one device to another. | A user cannot port these from one device to another. |
| Comprehensibility | High-level languages are human-friendly. They are, thus, very easy to understand and learn by any programmer. | Low-level languages are machine-friendly. They are, thus, very difficult to understand and learn by any human. |
| Dependency on Machines | High-level languages do not depend on machines. | Low-level languages are machine-dependent and thus very difficult to understand by a normal user. |
| Debugging | It is very easy to debug these languages. | A programmer cannot easily debug these languages. |
| Maintenance | High-level languages have a simple and comprehensive maintenance technique. | It is quite complex to maintain any low-level language. |
| Usage | High-level languages are very common and widely used for programming in today’s times. | Low-level languages are not very common nowadays for programming. |
| Speed of Execution | High-level languages take more time for execution as compared to low-level languages because these require a translation program. | The translation speed of low-level languages is very high. |
| Abstraction | High-level languages allow a higher abstraction. | Low-level languages allow very little abstraction or no abstraction at all. |
| Need of Hardware | One does not require a knowledge of hardware for writing programs. | Having knowledge of hardware is a prerequisite to writing programs. |
| Facilities Provided | High-level languages do not provide various facilities at the hardware level. | Low-level languages are very close to the hardware. They help in writing various programs at the hardware level. |
| Ease of Modification | The process of modifying programs is very difficult with high-level programs. It is because every single statement in it may execute a bunch of instructions. | The process of modifying programs is very easy in low-level programs. Here, it can directly map the statements to the processor instructions. |
| Examples | Some examples of high-level languages include Perl, BASIC, COBOL, Pascal, Ruby, etc. | Some examples of low-level languages include the Machine language and Assembly language. |
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