definition of a highlevel language?

[Patrick Mullen]

It basically works like this:

low level to high level

machine code
assembly -> translates to machine code
c -> compiles to assembly and machine code
python -> commands interpreted by a vm running on c

So python is "higher level" because it is built on top of lower level
languages.  If python were to compile to assembly/machine code (cython or
rpython perhaps) than it would be at the same level as c rather than higher
level.

At least this is my understanding of it.  PyPy at the moment is much higher
level than python, because it is built on top of python.

The higher the level of abstraction, the more flexible and portable a
language can be, in general.  Also, since it is built on more and more
things, time is spent translating down the stack, so higher level languages
tend to be slower as well.

However something like python is a bit tricky, because when you are using
extensions written in C, it sort of translates down skipping a step and acts
more on the c level.  The high-level/low-level waters are very muddy these
days.
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