While surfing came across this , back to basics : A programming language such as C , FORTRAN , or Pascal that enables a programmer to write programs that are more or less independent of a particular type of computer . Such languages are considered high-level because they are closer to human languages and further from machine languages . In contrast, assembly languages are considered low-level because they are very close to machine languages. The main advantage of high-level languages over low-level languages is that they are easier to read, write, and maintain. Ultimately, programs written in a high-level language must be translated into machine language by a compiler or interpreter . The first high-level programming languages were designed in the 1950s. Now there are dozens of different languages, including Ada , Algol, BASIC , COBOL , C, C++ , FORTRAN, LISP , Pascal, and Prolog SOURCE : http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/H/high_level_language.html