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Difference between Low Level and High Level Programming languages

Learn: Differences between Computer Lowe Level and High Level programming languages

I have already discussed about the Lowe Level and High Level programming language in the last post [Computer programming languages], in this post I am going to write about the differences between Low Level and High Level computer programming languages.

Low Level Vs High Level programming languages

Here, I am focusing on the following 7 points:

1) Platform Dependencies

First, you should know about the platform, here platform means Computer Hardware (Computer configuration).

Low Level programming languages are platform dependent that means programs written in Low Level language can run on the same hardware with same configuration, you cannot run them on hardware that has different configuration.

High Level programming languages are platform independent that means programs written in High Level language can run on different hardware with different configuration.

Remember: High Level programming languages are platform independent that doesn’t mean they are operating system independent. System hardware configuration may be different but Operating systems should be same.

2) Speed

Low Level language programs are faster than High Level language programs as they do not need to convert.

They have less number of syntaxes, functions, keywords, class libraries.

3) Easiness

Low Level language programs are not as easy as High Level language. There are only two Low Level programming languages Binary and Assembly. Binary has only 0’s, 1’s, while Assembly has some difficult type symbols which are knows as mnemonics.

But, the High Level languages programs are easy to write, read, modify and understand.

4) Performance

Since, Low Level Languages programs are faster, so performance of Low Level languages programs are better than the High Level languages programs.

5) Translation

Low Level language Binary does not need translation as Binary codes are Machine codes and computer understands them without any translations.

Assembly needs an Assembler to translate an Assembly program to its equivalent Binary/Machine Code.

High Level Languages are translated by the compilers or interpreters; sometimes (in case of some programming languages) both are required to get the Object/Binary file.

6) Flexibilities

High Level languages are flexible to read, edit, debug, understand etc but Low Level Languages are not so easy to handle.

High Level languages have huge libraries with a rich set of Data types, keywords, functions etc so these languages are really good to develop an application with many great features using less effort and resource.

7) Support

Low Level languages have less support than High Level Languages. There may be lesser number of professionals (community) in support of Low Level languages as comparisons to High Level Language support.