On 17 Jun 2015, at 3:44am, Marc L. Allen <mlallen at outsitenetworks.com> wrote:
> I don't know. Back in the day, assembly was low-level because it was directly > converted to machine code. C was high level because you could express more > complex structures without worrying about the underlying architecture. C was designed to be a processor-independent assembler code. C was called low-level because C pointers could be used to manipulate memory and the stack. C was called low-level because you had to understand the platform's memory map, stack and word size to use it, in contrast to FORTRAN/COBOL/BASIC where you blindly wrote your program with no understanding of your hardware. Thus, you get the argument between programmers about whether C was high-level or low-level. > I still like that distinction. I think people are trying to call C low level > simply because there are even higher level languages. It's not just 'high' or > 'low'. It's a spectrum. Characteristics, perhaps. Simon.
