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...
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
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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..........
Well, you get the point...
