Why Do People Want to Code in Higher Level Programming Languages?

in programming •  8 years ago 

I haven't posted on Steemit in quite a while, so I decided to do that today with an interesting topic. There are a lot of programming languages out there to use, but what is the real difference? Some is just preference, but sometimes a language will have a real advantage over another. This brings me to my topic...


Image source

High vs Low Level Programming Languages

So what do these terms mean? Well, I'll put it this way: high-level is closer to what a human would understand, and low-level is closer to what the computer understands, lowest being binary, or high/low voltage on circuits (high voltage = 1, low voltage = 0). The higher a language goes, the more tasks it does under the hood. When you program in assembly, you are dealing with registers, actual locations in your computer's processor. When you deal with a mid to high level languages, you are most likely dealing with variables. What you might not have realized, is that these variables are actually being stored in registers (and the stack -- the heap if using dynamic allocation, although they will most likely be loaded to registers eventually).

So what is the point of programming is assembly (or even understanding the binary) if it is so much more to deal with? The biggest advantage is just being able to understand how the computer and instructions actually work. Other than that, you may want to go in and edit your assembly code for the sake of speed. This is probably not very likely though; current compilers are extremely good at optimization. Lastly, in extreme cases, you may resort to looking at the assembly code for debugging. If you can think of another reason to program at such a low level, please leave a comment.

Moving on, high level languages are great. They take care of everything you don't need to worry about. The advantages of using these languages are obvious. It is much easier to understand! They may lack a bit in optimization, but in most cases, the difference would be minuscule.

For fun, here is a "Hello World" program in different languages. I had the assembler/compiler convert the same C program into assembly, then into binary. Let me know which ones you would rather interpret!

C

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Hello World!\n");
    return 0;
}

Assembly

    .file   "hello.c"
    .section    .rodata
.LC0:
    .string "Hello World!"
    .text
.globl main
    .type   main, @function
main:
.LFB2:
    pushq   %rbp
.LCFI0:
    movq    %rsp, %rbp
.LCFI1:
    movl    $.LC0, %edi
    call    puts
    movl    $0, %eax
    leave
    ret
.LFE2:
    .size   main, .-main
    .section    .eh_frame,"a",@progbits
.Lframe1:
    .long   .LECIE1-.LSCIE1
.LSCIE1:
    .long   0x0
    .byte   0x1
    .string "zR"
    .uleb128 0x1
    .sleb128 -8
    .byte   0x10
    .uleb128 0x1
    .byte   0x3
    .byte   0xc
    .uleb128 0x7
    .uleb128 0x8
    .byte   0x90
    .uleb128 0x1
    .align 8
.LECIE1:
.LSFDE1:
    .long   .LEFDE1-.LASFDE1
.LASFDE1:
    .long   .LASFDE1-.Lframe1
    .long   .LFB2
    .long   .LFE2-.LFB2
    .uleb128 0x0
    .byte   0x4
    .long   .LCFI0-.LFB2
    .byte   0xe
    .uleb128 0x10
    .byte   0x86
    .uleb128 0x2
    .byte   0x4
    .long   .LCFI1-.LCFI0
    .byte   0xd
    .uleb128 0x6
    .align 8
.LEFDE1:
    .ident  "GCC: (GNU) 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-55)"
    .section    .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits

Binary

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00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000  
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 00000000 01001000 11000001 11111000 00000011 01001000  
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 00000110 01100000 00000000 01001000 10001011 00000101  
 00001110 00000100 00100000 00000000 01001000 00111001  
 11000011 01110111 11100010 11000110 00000101 00001010  
 00000100 00100000 00000000 00000001 01001000 10000011  
 11000100 00001000 01011011 11001001 11000011 00001111  
 00011111 00000000 01010101 01001000 10000011 00111101  
 00011111 00000010 00100000 00000000 00000000 01001000  
 10001001 11100101 01110100 00010110 10111000 00000000  
 00000000 00000000 00000000 01001000 10000101 11000000  
 01110100 00001100 10111111 10011000 00000110 01100000  
 00000000 01001001 10001001 11000011 11001001 01000001  
 11111111 11100011 11001001 11000011 10010000 10010000  
 01010101 01001000 10001001 11100101 10111111 10101000  
 00000101 01000000 00000000 11101000 11110010 11111110  
 11111111 11111111 10111000 00000000 00000000 00000000  
 00000000 11001001 11000011 10010000 10010000 10010000  
 11110011 11000011 00001111 00011111 10000000 00000000  
 00000000 00000000 00000000 00001111 00011111 10000000  
 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 01001100 10001001  
 01100100 00100100 11100000 01001100 10001001 01101100  
 00100100 11101000 01001100 10001101 00100101 10100011  
 00000001 00100000 00000000 01001100 10001001 01110100  
 00100100 11110000 01001100 10001001 01111100 00100100  
 11111000 01001001 10001001 11110110 01001000 10001001  
 01011100 00100100 11010000 01001000 10001001 01101100  
 00100100 11011000 01001000 10000011 11101100 00111000  
 01000001 10001001 11111111 01001001 10001001 11010101  
11101000 01111001 11111110 11111111 11111111 01001000  
10001101 00000101 01110110 00000001 00100000 00000000  
01001001 00101001 11000100 01001001 11000001 11111100  
 00000011 01001101 10000101 11100100 01110100 00011110  
 00110001 11101101 01001000 10001001 11000011 10010000  
 01001000 10000011 11000101 00000001 01001100 10001001  
 11101010 01001100 10001001 11110110 01000100 10001001  
 11111111 11111111 00010011 01001000 10000011 11000011  
 00001000 01001001 00111001 11101100 01110101 11101000  
 01001000 10001011 01011100 00100100 00001000 01001000  
 10001011 01101100 00100100 00010000 01001100 10001011  
 01100100 00100100 00011000 01001100 10001011 01101100  
 00100100 00100000 01001100 10001011 01110100 00100100  
 00101000 01001100 10001011 01111100 00100100 00110000  
 01001000 10000011 11000100 00111000 11000011 10010000  
 10010000 10010000 10010000 10010000 01010101 01001000  
 10001001 11100101 01010011 10111011 01111000 00000110  
 01100000 00000000 01001000 10000011 11101100 00001000  
..........
Well, you get the point...

programming code low high level
8 years ago by

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    • [-]
      ·  8 years ago 

    Hi, @charlie.wilson,

    Nice explanation and comparison! This ought to help non-coders better understand programming. ;)

    😄😇😄

    @creatr

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      ·  8 years ago 

    Пирамида )))

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