Computer languages have huge importance in digital world. Because if you want to create anything such as application, website, software or game you need to write its made using a coding language, which is most probably a high level language because they are easier to use and understand by humans. In this article we will understand what is a high level language? Its types uses, advantages and disadvantages
What is High Level Language?
High level languages are programming languages which are used for writing programs or software which could be understood by the humans and computer. High level languages are easier to understand for humans because it uses lot of symbols letters phrases to represent logic and instructions in a program. It contains high level of abstraction compared to low level languages.
Examples of Some High Level Languages
- Python: Used by programmers for various tasks, such as web development, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and scientific computing because it have very simple syntax and easy to learn and understand.
- Java: Java is known for its use on multiple platforms, its not as easy as python but its used in mobile app development, web applications.
- C++: C++ is very popular and widely used because it have features of both low and high level languages which makes it suitable for making complex software such as game engines, desktop applications, performance critical applications.
- Ruby: Ruby is used for web development, web applications it is known for its elegant syntax and awesome frameworks such as rails.
- JavaScript: Javascript is used with html or other languages for making the web design interactive and dynamic. Its library helps creating multipurpose web applications.
Execution of High Level Languages
There are three ways in which high level languages can be executed
Interpreted
In this there is a program called interpreter, its task is to read the code written in high level language understand the program flow and execute it. It just executes it or perform instruction in it without compiling. This happens in case of interpreted languages such as Python, Ruby, and JavaScript
Compiled Languages
This a little different from interpreted languages, in this first the code is transformed into a executable code, in machine language . Two ways of compilation are there first is by machine code generation other is by Intermediate representation.
- Machine code generation- In this the code is compiled by compilers into machine code then they are executed.
- In intermediate representation the code is first, compiled to intermediate representation which is saved so that there is no need to read source file again. When its saved it forms a byte code which can be executed by the machine.
some compiled languages are C, C++, Java
Transcompile Languages
This is also known as Source-to-source translation Because in this the source code of one language is converted into source code of another programming language. This is done so that code can be used for multiple platforms. Some transcompile languages are TypeScript, Coffee Script etc.
Use of High Level Language
- Web Development: Web development can be easily done using html, css, JavaScript they are high level languages because they are easy to understand and make the web development easy to learn for everyone.
- Data Analysis: R and Python are the most popular languages for data analysis, data analysts use them for study large amount of data due to different libraries and data manipulation capabilities.
- DBMS(Data Base Management System): Its a place your data is stored and managed. Like if you create website you need to store data somewhere such as files, coding etc. So php and sql are high level languages which help us storing and accessing the data.
- Game Development: Nowadays gaming is getting popular, what makes it possible to build these complicated high graphic games, width lot of buttons, accessibility. It because of high level languages which makes game development possible.
Advantages of High Level Languages
- The biggest advantage of using high level languages is that they are easy to understand, remember, learn, writing codes, to debug.
- There are different libraries available which can be used for development, many defined operators, data types and frameworks also which reduce the amount we need to write.
- They are portable to use, means we can use there code for different platforms without much modification.
- It provides a higher level of abstraction, means it hides the complexities of hardware from the programmer. You don’t need to know about hardware before writing program.
Disadvantages of High level Languages
- High Level languages are slower as compared to low level languages because there is more level of abstraction with hardware so they require more processing and more memory for execution
- High level languages have less control over hardware, because the complexities of hardware for the programmer in high level languages.
- For the maximum utilization of hardware or CPU in terms of performance low level languages are best.
FAQs on What is High Level Language?
Q.1: Are high level languages suitable for hardware programming?
Answer:
No, most low level languages are used for better hardware programming because they have more control over hardware but high level languages have many more layers of abstraction which makes it unsuitable.
Q.2: What is meant by domain specific high level languages?
Answer:
It means the language which can be used for each specific domain, for example SQL can only be used for server management, we cannot use it for creating website, or html can be used for web development not for developing desktop softwares.
Q.3: What is use of interpreters or compilers in high level language?
Answer:
The main task of compilers is to convert human written code to machine language so that machine could execute the process. So, interpreters or compilers are used in high level language.