definition of a highlevel language?

[George Sakkis]

On May 26, 4:51 pm, notnorweg... at yahoo.se wrote:

> On 26 Maj, 22:16, miller.pau... at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > On May 26, 3:56 pm, notnorweg... at yahoo.se wrote:
>
> > > is the first example here a layer between machine and the second
> > > example?
>
> > My first example was intended to be C, or at least close to it.  The
> > second example is Python.  I consider the C snippet to be low-level,
> > while the corresponding Python is high-level.  There are simply fewer
> > extraneous details for me to worry about at the Python level, and
> > that's why I prefer to work with Python over C when practical.
>
> i know one is C and one i spython, iwas talking more at a conceptual
> level and i know cpython is written in C.
>
> what im asking is can a highlevellanguage be written directly on top
> of the machine or a highlevellanguage is always written on top of a
> lowlevellanguage?

In principle it can be written directly on top of the machine. In
practice it doesn't, for the same reasons we don't build spaceships by
directly gluing molecules together. Civilization as we know it would
be impossible without hierarchical levels of abstraction.

George