Low level language abbreviated as LLL, are languages close to the machine level instruction set. They provide less or no abstraction from the hardware. A low-level programming language interacts directly with the registers and memory. Since, instructions written in low level languages are machine dependent. Programs developed using low level languages are machine dependent and are not portable.
Programming Languages
Classification of programming languages
Thousands of programming languages have been written till date. Each for some specific purpose. Some programming languages provide less or no abstraction from the hardware. Whereas some provide higher abstraction. To separate programming languages on the basis of level of abstraction from hardware, they are classified into various categories.
Programming language – history and popular languages
The world of computer science, programming and software development starts here. Before I formally define programming language. Let’s dissect it. Programming language is made of two parts “programming” and “language”. We already learn’t about what is programming. Here we will learn about language. Think for a while and try to define what language means.
Various programming paradigms
Programming paradigm is a way to classify programming languages according to their style of programming and features they provide. There are several features that determine a programming paradigm such as modularity, objects, interrupts or events, control flow etc. A programming language can be single paradigm or multi-paradigm.
With the wide spread of programming, various programming paradigms came into existence. Some popular programming paradigms are:
Imperative programming
Imperative programming is the oldest paradigm and is still in practice. It is the widely practiced paradigm in the day-to-day programming. It mainly focuses on steps to be done and works on the logic of “First do this then do that”. It defines a sequence of statements in order of which the operations must take place. In imperative programming, the control flow is explicit and depend on collection of GOTO statements. Imperative programming lacks the support of modularity.
Examples of imperative programming languages are – Assembly, C, C++, Java etc.