Overview

In this tutorial, we will learn about Computer programming languages and their classifications. Humans speak and communicate using a natural language such as English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Hindi, Chinese, Tamil, etc. Natural language is referred to as Human Language.

Computer languages provide the means of communication with the computer machine. A computer programming language is a set of symbols and statements that denote operations a programmer wishes a computer to perform.

Computer Programming Languages

Computer Languages are broadly classified into the following categories:

• Low-level Languages
• High-level Languages

Low-Level Languages

Low-level languages are close to the language that the computer machine understands. They are highly dependent on the machine and its hardware components. The low-level languages are further classified into the following:

• Machine Language
• Assembly Language

Machine Language

Machine Language(ML) is in the form of 0’s and 1’s, called binary numbers understood directly by the computer. Machine language is a collection of machine instructions.  It is machine-dependent and is challenging to learn and write programs in Machine Language.

Example: Intel Machine Language.

Assembly Language

The next step in early programming languages was to use symbols or mnemonics to denote low-level machine instructions. The machine instructions comprising of 0’sand 1’s are substituted by symbols (mnemonics) to improve their understanding. These languages are known as symbolic languages.

The symbolic languages had to be translated and assembled into machine languages. Hence, symbolic languages are also known as Assembly languages( AL). The program that translates the assembly language program to machine language is known as the assembler.

Example: x86 Intel assembly language, MIPS assembly language

High-level Languages

Assembly language programming is more straightforward and less time-consuming than machine-level programming. However, the programmers must have knowledge of the machine architecture/processor on which the program will run.

High-level languages are close to the language that humans understand.  The high-level languages hide the inner details and implementation of the machine and its hardware design from the programmer. For example, the high-level programmer is least concerned about how many CPU registers store data inside the microprocessor.

The programmer need not worry about the target computers and can concentrate on the problem, algorithm, and source code of the computer program. This process of hiding implementation details is known as abstraction. Programs written in high-level languages are portable to many computers.

Examples: FORTRAN, C, C++, Java, Python