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A comment on Ask HN: definition of a highlevel language?.

Re:Ask HN: definition of a highlevel language? by jws on Monday May 26, 2008 @03:45PM (#200406)
I think a high level language is anything other than assembly language. That is from the perspective of someone that started with machine code and assembly language.

I don't think anyone ever set out to create a "low level" language. There was simply "coding the machine directly" and then "high level language".

Now it is tempting to draw a multidimensional line in the features of languages and partition it into "high" and "low", but I don't think that is where the term originates. It is a one hand clapping sort of adjective.

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Re:Ask HN: definition of a highlevel language? by aaronblohowiak on Monday May 26, 2008 @04:58PM (#200442)
i think if there were some way to codify distance between language as typed by programmer and machine code executed, we'd have a handy function to determine how high-level a language is.

further, aren't all lines multidimensional? ;P

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