Programming languages and the steps to run a program
Computers only run machine code: patterns of 0s and 1s. Low-level languages sit close to that code; high-level languages such as Pascal use English-like statements that must be translated first. Paper 1 asks which language is NOT high-level almost every year: the answer is Assembly.
By the end of this page you can
- Tell low-level languages from high-level languages
- Say what an assembler, a compiler and an interpreter do
- Put the four steps of implementing a program in order
- Answer language and translation questions
Goals tick themselves off as you try the activities below.
Photo: Markus Spiske, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped, resized, JPEG q72.
Every line here is high-level code; it must be translated into machine code before it runs.
How often it shows up in past papers
All papers13 of 14 papers
Last 55 of 5 · 2019–2025
Paper 1 counts come from our past-paper bank of CSEC Information Technology Paper 1s. The last-5 row shows how often it came up in the five most recent papers.
Inside this topic
- Low and high levelLocked
- Four stepsgameLocked
- Key termsLocked
- Test yourselfmarkedLocked
- Practise for real · 2 past questionsLocked