High-level programming language

A programming language whose abstractions make programs less dependent on a computer’s hardware and machine instructions. It is generally easier for people to read and write than machine code or assembly language.

Compiler: A program that translates source code into another representation, often machine code or an intermediate form. Compilers commonly translate high-level programs into forms a processor can execute.
Source code: Human-readable instructions written in a programming language before translation or execution. High-level programs are commonly authored and maintained as source code.
FORTRAN: A programming language developed at IBM in the 1950s for scientific and numerical computation. FORTRAN showed that compiled high-level code could be practical for demanding scientific work.
Low-level programming language: A programming language closely tied to a computer’s instruction set or hardware operations. Low-level languages expose machine details that high-level languages typically conceal.
Interpreter: A program that executes source code by analyzing and carrying out its instructions. Interpreters execute many high-level languages without first producing a standalone machine-code program.
Intermediate representation: A structured internal form of a program used between source code and lower-level execution formats. Compilers use intermediate representations to separate language-specific analysis from machine-specific code generation.
COBOL: A programming language designed for business data processing, with syntax shaped around English-like statements. COBOL brought high-level programming to large-scale commercial data processing.
C (programming language): A general-purpose language that combines structured programming with direct access to memory and machine operations. C occupies a debated middle ground: portable abstractions coexist with close hardware control.
Runtime system: Software services that support a program while it runs, such as memory management and exception handling. Runtime services can provide the abstractions that free code from direct hardware management.
Just-in-time compilation: Compilation performed during program execution, often using information gathered at runtime. Some high-level language runtimes compile frequently used code as programs run.

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