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Cons of High-Level Languages

How high-level can a language get, and what are the potential problems associated with them? In Star Trek, science-fiction computers communicate with their commanders in an almost human language. Our science fiction tells us that the higher-level a language is, the easier it is to communicate, the better. In real life this isn't the case.

The biggest problem with high-level languages is that they are slower than their low-level counterparts. There is a give-and-take relationship between the speed of development and the efficiency of a program. c is speed efficient because the programmer handles all of the low-level resource management by hand.

Since they aren't as speedy and they handle low-level resource management themselves, high-level languages are not great for engineering systemlevel programs like device drivers or kernels, or other situations in which you need tight control over low-level tasks, like memory allocation. Lack of speed also makes them poorly suited to computationally intensive applications, like those that build data structures and algorithms from scratch. In particular, a low-level language may be more suited to your application if:

• It needs to implement complex algorithms or data structures.

• It needs to manipulate large data sets.

• Execution speed is critical.

• The functions are well defined and will not change.

The pros and cons of high-level languages are highlighted in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2. High-Level Language Pros and Cons

Pro	Con
Saves human time	Less efficient during computer runtime
Portable to many platforms	Specific platforms aren't as efficiently utilized
Modularity and reusability	Can lead to dizzyingly high number of libraries
Easier to read, write, and maintain	Loss of some control over code organization
Auto-management of many bug-prone features	Less low-level control of resources
Easy to learn	Too many programmers could lower one's salary!

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