* David Makin <makinmagic@tiscali.co.uk> [Apr 21. 2014 14:57]:
On 20 Apr 2014, at 19:05, Joerg Arndt wrote: [...]
I can certainly live with swap(a,b). Note C is not a high level language.
?? Surely any language where the majority of instructions cover more than one machine code instruction is "high" level ;) Or to put it another way - any language that can potentially compile one instruction into *different* but equivalently performing machine code is "high" level ;)
OK, to put into perspective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_programming_language I'd rather consider, for example, Python, Ruby, and Languages of computer algebra systems as examples of "high level languages". C rather as "low level", as there is not a lot of space between C and machine code, indeed I can often predict the machine code for small programs (apart from the compiler's neat tricks such as unusual instructions for specific CPUs). C++: "mid level"? In it's raw form, maybe, but including the STL, certainly, as it can be used in a quite high-level-ish manner. No quality ranking implied, I use what is good for the problem at hand. Best regards, jj P.S.: The German Wiki page http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höhere_Programmiersprache essentially says "it's high level if it is not assembler".
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