definition of a highlevel language?

[Patrick Stinson]

The way I think of it is that a language is commonly referred to by the
implementation of syntax and semantics. The implementation is defined by
a processable medium, for example 1) punch cards, 2) processor-specific
code, or 3) some processor code interpreting some other code.
Examples include:

1) I'm too young to know :)
2) common low-level language like C
3) common high-level like python

ikke norska? kvorfor ikkje? itne? hva for noke?

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 11:02 AM, <notnorwegian at yahoo.se> wrote:

> On 26 Maj, 20:57, miller.pau... at gmail.com wrote:
> > On May 26, 2:34 pm, notnorweg... at yahoo.se wrote:
> >
> > I wanted to address some other points I failed to mention in my first
> > response.
> >
> > > so are they fundamentally differently built or is it just a lot of
> > > lowlevel operations built on top of each other?
> >
> > Partly.  A high-level language is essentially one that gives you high-
> > level operations, like "apply the function f to each element of the
> > sequence seq, and return [f(seq[0]), f(seq[1]), ... f(seq[n])].
> >
> > But, it's more than that.  (You use Haskell as your example, but I'll
> > use Python because I know it roughly a million percent better than
> > Haskell... hehe.)  In Python, you have support from the language to
> > treat functions as first-class objects; in C, you explicitly cannot do
> > this -- to map an arbitrary function over a sequence, you're
> > restricted to accessing the function through a pointer.  On the
> > surface, it's the same operation, but that extra level of indirection
> > can really bog one's mind down.  Think about how difficult it is for a
> > human to interpret the declaration of a function pointer in C, for
> > instance.
> >
> > > haskell is considered a very highlevellanguage but can you do
> > > systemsprogramming with it(yes maybe it is very unpractical i dont
> > > know but can you)?
> > > is lambda calculus a more abstract and efficient way of modeling a
> > > computer?
> >
> > Lambda calculus doesn't model computers.  It models *computation*.
> > That is, given a Turing machine, there's a set of functions in the
> > lambda calculus, which, when suitably combined, will yield the exact
> > same result as the original Turing machine.  That doesn't in any way
> > imply that Turing machines work by interpreting lambda calculus.
> >
> > > how did lispmachines work? was the basic system programmed in LISP?
> >
> > Yes, the whole kit and kaboodle, all the way down to the microcode was
> > programmed in LISP.  In principle, there's no reason we couldn't have
> > Haskell machines or Python machines.  It's just that nobody's been
> > crazy enough to do it, that I know of. :-)
>
>
> what is crazy about it?
>
> in the same way programming webapps in C would be annoying because you
> have to do a lot of lowlevel tasks it is dumb to program computer ina
> highlevellanguage because you dont have direct access to lowlevel
> tasks meaning you cant program it very efficiently, ie make it fast?
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
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