[invisal]

1ts not really a matter of perspect1ve. 1t 1s what 1t is. 1 can say that the ocean
1s purple but that doesnt make 1t so. maybe 1 th1nk 1t 1s but 1f most of the rest of the world d1sagree's...

It is a matter of perspective. The definition come from people and it is
people perspective who shape the definition.

If you say the ocean is purple and most people disagree, then ocean isn't purple.
If you say the ocean is purple and most people agree it is, then, ocean must be purple.

Same goes to programming language.

If you say C is low-level programming language and most people agree, then it must be
If you say C is low-level programming language and most people disagree, then it should not be.

The definition of "low-level" programming language will be shaped by people.

[ArkPhaze]

I never said it did, you should read my post once over again. You completely missed my point, then reinstate my point as though you're trying to tell me something new: "it just makes it lower on the ladder of high level languages." -- This is exactly what I was getting at.

clearly you need to reread my first response as well - that was the point i made in my first response on this thread. you seem to be arguing points ive already made now.

Why not? It's an accepted point against C being purely high level by most experienced programmers, and I too have been a programmer for some years now. It's a feature, but it's still part of the language, as to what defines C as a programming language in its own standard. Inline ASM is not some third party library, it is part of the language specs.

You keep talking about low level though... I haven't been comparing C to a low level language period. I've been explaining how it contains low level features, and how it doesn't fit with the rest of the high level languages.

i was responding to someone who was saying its a stretch to call C a high level language when you got involved. by all definitions it is a high level language. its not as high as say Visual Basic, but its not a low level language. it may provide some low-level access through features like inline ASM - but its not low level itself. when you write code in C you are not directly accessing the hardware or giving machine instructions using C. Ive already said twice now that I can accept it being called a mid-level language but on a scale where there is only low and high, its definitely high. attitudes may change over the years, but a low level language is low - anything above it is high. this seems to be a complicated concept for some people.

Yes, but then are you trying to say that inline ASM can't interface with any registers or do anything on that behalf?

inline ASM isnt C, its ASM


at this point i think youre just trying to beat a dead horse.

I'm not restating points you've already made because the semantics behind the context of what you're saying is not what you think it is in proper English. "i would concede that you might be willing to call it a mid-level language. but for decades it was a high-level language." To me that says that you're going to admit as true that others might be willing to call it mid-level (but this doesn't mean that you do), and the implication that could be made after you say "but for decades it was a high-level language", is that aside from all other current knowledge and evidence, you're going with old tradition and calling it high level only.

when you write code in C you are not directly accessing the hardware or giving machine instructions using C.

Using inline ASM you would be. Would you not consider a mod to a car, part of that particular car after it was implemented? Same idea here, look at the C language specification, it defines inline ASM as part of the language itself; the asm keyword.

Ive already said twice now that I can accept it being called a mid-level language but on a scale where there is only low and high, its definitely high. attitudes may change over the years, but a low level language is low - anything above it is high.

This is a bit nit-picking, but doesn't that seem contradicting? You mention the existence of defining something as mid-level, then you omit it entirely and say that there is only 2 extremes on the language spectrum? (low and high)

inline ASM isnt C, its ASM

Read my analogy above, or educate yourself and read the C language specification. Components of a language irregardless do not mean that they aren't a factor in determining low to high level on any degree. If inline ASM was not part of the language by it's own definition and standard, then perhaps I would agree.

This again, could be very subjective however, but from your point of view, you are arguing a topic without much knowledge of the language itself that you're debating about, and for a basic idea of basic syntax from the language without much consideration to the language as a whole.

Reading through some of the posts: "a low-level programming language is a programming language that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's instruction set architecture". Inline ASM is widely regarded as a feature of the C language; the language standard itself sets up all of the infrastructure for it to be included in any compiled C code. There's no separation of inline ASM from the idea of C as a programming language if you've seen the Annex J subsection of the ISO standard. Plus, back then, C didn't have any children, unlike today, where many languages considerably have branched off from it, making them ideally further away from concealing machine code, than C as a programming language on its own.

Again, as invisal has been pointing out, I could take ASM and consider it high level because it is an abstract version of what binary form it translates to at execution time.

[erpicci]

If I may, I don't think we all agree on the same definition of low, mid and high level. Hence, we don't have any formal, unambiguous, accepted metrics. So we cannot classify anything.

I have the feeling that most of us are saying the same things. The point is that someone says C is 10 meters high, others claim it is 32.8 feets...

[ArkPhaze]

If I may, I don't think we all agree on the same definition of low, mid and high level. Hence, we don't have any formal, unambiguous, accepted metrics. So we cannot classify anything.

I have the feeling that most of us are saying the same things. The point is that someone says C is 10 meters high, others claim it is 32.8 feets...

Not exactly, I would say that more people are saying C is "tall" because it's not as short as the height of a pebble off the ground, as a way of being optimistic about C, even if there are things taller than it. (i.e. it doesn't classify as "short" because too many people own a measuring tape, and have an exact idea of a certain margin.)