Demystifying magic: high-level low-level programming
Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS international conference on Virtual execution environments
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It has frequently been remarked that it is easier recognize “high level” languages than to define the concept. For the purposes of this debate, however, I think that we agree that a language is high level to the extent that it discourages (forbids) the specification of machine details (register numbers, absolute addresses, op codes, word-packing, etc.) as a routine part of program composition and low level to the extent that it encourages (requires) such specification. (Note that, by this definition, assembly languages occupy a position intermediate between machine languages and compiled languages.) Thus, I take the point at issue to be: “To what extent is it desirable for the system programmer to specify machine details?”