Types of Programming Language

This lesson covers the classification of programming languages into low-level (machine code and assembly) and high-level languages. For the OCR H446 exam, you must understand the characteristics of each level, compare them, and explain when each type is appropriate.

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Classification of Programming Languages

Programming languages exist on a spectrum from low-level (close to hardware) to high-level (close to human language).

  Human Language
       |
  High-Level Languages (Python, Java, C#, JavaScript)
       |
  Assembly Language
       |
  Machine Code
       |
  Hardware (CPU)

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Machine Code

Machine code is the lowest-level programming language — it consists of binary instructions (sequences of 0s and 1s) that the CPU can execute directly.

Feature	Detail
Format	Binary (e.g. 0011 0001 0000 1010)
Readability	Virtually unreadable to humans
Portability	Specific to a particular CPU architecture — code written for an x86 processor will not run on ARM
Execution	Executed directly by the CPU with no translation needed
Speed	Fastest possible — no translation overhead
Use today	Almost never written by hand; generated by compilers and assemblers