definition of a highlevel language?

[Dan Upton]

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Patrick Mullen <saluk64007 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

Alternately, you can think of a pseudo-continuum from low level to
high level, sort of as a function from language lines to assembly
instructions... for instance, I seem to recall reading somewhere that
made the example of BASIC being higher level than C because one
statement in BASIC translated to, on average, 5 assembly instructions,
whereas a C statement translated to, on average, 2.5 assembly
instructions.  Of course, maybe that's not the best metric, because
for instance you might have a comparison between something like Java
and C++ where the individual statement doesn't do any more or less
work (say, creating a new instance of an object), but if you take into
account all of the JVM instructions for intepreting or JITing the
bytecode you'd get a lot higher ratio of assembly instructions to
source statements.