Computer Languages and it’s Types
What are Computer Languages
A group of instructions that are used to create computer programs are known as computer languages. The main aim of these languages is to make human-computer interaction possible and easy. We, humans, have invented these computer languages to make our work easier by making our tasks done by the computer.
Types of Computer Languages
Low-Level Language
A Low-level computer language consists of only 1’s and 0’s. First and Second generation computers were first built using this language. This type of language is easily understood by a computer but it is very difficult for humans to understand this. These Low-level languages are specifically designed to interact with the computer hardware and are categorized into two types- Machine level language and Assembly level language.
Machine Level Language
Machine level language is a type of Low-level language. This language is believed to be the oldest computer language. Computers tend to understand only the language of Digital Electronics which deals with the presence and absence of voltages. 2 logics can play their role within the computer which are-
Positive Logic: In this, the presence of voltage is denoted by 1 and the absence of voltage is denoted by 0.
Negative Logic: Here, the presence of voltage is denoted by 0 while the absence of voltage is denoted by 1.
Computers can follow one of the logics at a time and not both simultaneously. A program can be written using only 0s and 1s to make the computer understand and data can also be represented using only 0s and 1s. Such a program is called a Machine Language program. A computer can directly understand a program written in the machine language hence, a machine language program does not require any translator to convert from one form to another.
Assembly Level Language
Assembly level language was introduced with the advancement of Machine Level Language. This computer language uses symbols, which are popularly known as mnemonics in computer terminology to write the instructions. Hence, writing a program in Assembly Level Language is more understandable to humans rather than machine-level language. In this language, symbolic names are used to denote addresses and data. The Assembly language code gets converted into a Machine language code with the help of an Assembler for the computer to understand the binary-converted Assembly Language.
High-Level Language
High-Level Languages are the advanced development languages in the evolution of computer languages. The main goal of these languages is to make programming easier and less error-free. These high-level languages use words and commands along with symbols and numbers. High-Level Programming languages are created to be more user-friendly and easier for humans to understand than Low-level languages. They use keywords similar to English words, making coding more intuitive. Here are some examples of High-Level Programming languages are-
C
C++
Java
Java Script
Python
C#
PHP
Difference between High Level and Low-Level Language
High-Level languages and low-level languages are different from each other in many aspects. High-level languages are human friendly whereas low-level languages are programmer friendly. High-level languages take longer to execute the programs while program execution time is less in low-level languages. Some more differences between both languages have been tabulated below.
Difference between High Level and Low-Level Language
SL. No. High-Level Language Low Level Language
1 High Level Languages are easily understood by humans as they use English statements. , Low-Level languages are hard to understand by humans because of the usage of binary numbers which can be easily understood by computers.
2 These languages are human-friendly. ,These languages are programmer friendly.
3 This takes a long time to be executed. , Program Execution time is less.
4 These are simple to maintain ,. These are complex to maintain.
5 Debugging is easy in High-Level languages. , Debugging is hard in Low-level languages.
6. Programs of High-level languages are portable hence, can be used on any computer. Programs in low-level languages are not portable.
7. These languages are widely used in today’s technology. Low-level languages are not used in the prevailing technology.
Important Terms Used in Computer Language
Summary
Learning about programming language is extremely interesting as it gives a way for the technology-driven society we are living in today. Programming languages have come a long way from early machine codes to the human-readable code that now leads our favorite technologies. computer programming will continue to evolve in the same way that it has for the past few years, keep learning the computer languages and it will be exciting to watch what the future holds.