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The three levels of programming languages
Programming languages exist on a spectrum from "closest to hardware" to "closest to human":
- Machine language — pure binary (1s and 0s). The CPU understands this directly.
- Low-level languages — e.g. Assembly. Uses short words (mnemonics) instead of binary, but still very close to hardware.
- High-level languages — e.g. C++, Python, Java. Use English-like words and are far from the hardware. Require translation.