High and Low

Level
Programming
Language

By: Kieylle Justin Meneses

 HIGH-LEVEL
PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGE
– A high-level language is any
programming language that enables
development of a program in a much
more user-friendly programming
context and is generally independent of
the computer's hardware architecture.
– A high-level language has a higher level
of abstraction from the computer, and
focuses more on the programming logic
rather than the underlying hardware
components such as memory
addressing and register utilization.
– High-level languages are designed to be used by
the human operator or the programmer. They are
referred to as "closer to humans." In other words,
their programming style and context is easier to
learn and implement than low-level languages,
and the entire code generally focuses on the
specific program to be created.
– A high-level language does not require addressing
hardware constraints when developing a program.
However, every single program written in a high-
level language must be interpreted into machine
language before being executed by the computer.
FORTRAN
– Fortran, formerly written in all caps (FORTRAN), is a programming language
designed for numeric computation and scientific computing. First introduced in
1954, Fortran is the oldest programming language and is still widely used. Its
applications are found in the scientific fields, particularly numerical weather
prediction, computational fluid dynamics and computational physics. Fortran is
also quite popular in high-performance computing and is used in program
benchmarking and ranking the world's fastest supercomputers.
FORTRAN
– Some of the characteristics making Fortran suitable for – Fortran has evolved over time. and inheritance,
scientists include: polymorphism and dynamic type alloStarting off
– as a purely procedural programming language, it
Built-in support for arguments in subroutines
now supports object-oriented features like type
– Rich set of intrinsic functions extension cation.
– Built-in support for complex numbers
– Support for array notation allowing operations on array
sections
– Strong aliasing rules for memory pointers, resulting in more
efficient code after compilation
– Today, despite having competition from languages like C and
C++, Fortran is still extensively used to perform floating-
point benchmark tests on new computer processors. Over
the years, a vast collection of code has been written with
Fortran in many scientific and engineering machines,
allowing the language to persist.
 ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES OF FORTRAN
Advantages
– The primary advantage of using Fortran these days is that
there is still a considerable amount software written in it for
which there is no equivalent in a more modern language. For
example LAPACK was written originally in Fortran and there
have been various attempts to implement equivalent
functionality in C++ and Java, but they have not reached parity
with the original Fortran. In some cases it may be easier to
write software in Fortran to interface with the legacy software
rather than developing compatibility layers.
– Aside from that there are a few bonuses that Fortran offers
that other languages don't (e.g. the ** expoentiation
operator), but all of these are quite minor.
Disadvantages
– The main disadvantage of Fortran is that it was
created before several important advances in
programming languages were developed.
Eventhough several modern features have been
added to Fortran over the last 20 years (for
example a form of object orientation), Fortran
certainly shows its age. For example, Fortran
doesn't do argument type checking for functions
and subroutine inputs and arguments are passed
by reference by default. It is difficult to find books
on Fortran these days, making even harder to
learn for programmers who only know modern
programming languages. For these reaTsons,
Fortran use is usually limited to maintenance of
and interfacing with legacy software.
 LOW-LEVEL
PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGE
– A low-level language is a programming language that deals with a
computer's hardware components and constraints. It has no (or only
a minute level of) abstraction in reference to a computer and works
to manage a computer's operational semantics.
– A low-level language may also be referred to as a computer’s native
language.
– Low-level languages are designed to operate and handle the entire
hardware and instructions set architecture of a computer directly.
– Low-level languages are considered to be closer to computers. In
other words, their prime function is to operate, manage and
manipulate the computing hardware and components. Programs
and applications written in a low-level language are directly
executable on the computing hardware without any interpretation
or translation
PDP-10 ASSEMBLER
– The PDP-10 is a general purpose stored program computer. There are four different processors (computers) in the PDP-10 family (the PDP-6, the KA10,
the KI10 and the KL10). This file discusses primarily the KA-10 version, which is what most of the ITS systems are.There are three principal aspects of
assembly language programming: the machine instructions, the assembler, and the operating system.
– The machine instructions are the primitive operations with which we write programs. Learning the instruction set means learning what operations are
performed by each instruction. Programming is the art or science of combining these operations to accomplish some particular task.
– The machine instructions, like everything else in a computer, are in binary. The assembler is a program that translates the mnemonic names by which
we refer to instructons into the binary form that the computer recognizes. The assembler also does a variety of other chores that are essentially
bookkeeping. There are several assemblers for the PDP-10, which differ in various ways; what they all have in common is the PDP-10 machine
instructions, which are described in this file. Everything else about how to use a particular assembler is documented under that assembler. The
assembler used most on ITS is called MIDAS; *Note MIDAS: (MIDAS).
– The operating system is a special program that handles all input and output and which schedules among user programs. For its own protection and the
protection of other users the operating system places various restrictions on user programs. User mode programs are resticted to memory assigned to
them by the operating system; they may not perform any machine input-output instructions, nor can they perform several other restricted operations
(e.g., HALT instruction). To facilitate user input-output and core allocation the operating system provides various system calls (UUO or JSYS operations)
by which a user program can communicate its wishes to the system. Essentially all programs except the operating system itself are run as user mode
programs. Editors, assemblers, compilers, utilities, and programs that you write yourself are all user mode programs.
ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES
OF PDP-10 ASSEMBLER
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
– Programs written in machine language are replaceable by mnemonics – Long programs written in such languages cannot
which are easier to remember. be executed on small sized computers.
– Memory Efficient.
– It takes lot of time to code or write the program,
– It is not required to keep track of memory locations.
as it is more complex in nature.
– Faster in speed.
– Difficult to remember the syntax.
– Easy to make insertions and deletions.
– Hardware Oriented. – Lack of portability of program between
– Requires fewer instructions to accomplish the same result. computers of different makes.
– No SDKs (System Development Kit).