Types of programming language, translators and integrated development environments

What the syllabus asks of you

• Explain what is meant by a high-level language • Advantages and disadvantages include: and a low-level language, including the – ease of reading and writing code, advantages and disadvantages of each e.g. low-level is hard to read – ease of debugging code – machine independence – direct manipulation of hardware
• Understand that assembly language is a form of low-level language that uses mnemonics, and that an assembler is needed to translate an assembly language program into machine code
• Describe the operation of a compiler and an • A compiler translates the whole code at once interpreter, including how high-level language is before executing it, producing an executable file translated by each and how errors are reported • An interpreter translates and executes the code line-by-line • A compiler provides an error report for the whole code if errors are detected • An interpreter stops execution when an error is found (IDEs) continued Candidates should be able to: Notes and guidance
• Explain the advantages and disadvantages of a • Including an understanding that an interpreter is compiler and an interpreter mostly used when developing a program and a compiler is used to translate the final program
• Explain the role of an IDE in writing program • Including: code and the common functions IDEs provide – code editors – run-time environment – translators – error diagnostics – auto-completion – auto-correction – prettyprint