high-level language

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.

program
an organized list of instructions that, when executed, causes the computer to behave in a
predetermined manner. without programs, computers are useless.
a program is like a recipe. it contains a list of ingredients (called variables) and a list of
directions (called statements) that tell the computer what to do with the variables. the
variables can represent numeric data, text, or graphical images.
there are many programming languages -- c, c++, pascal, basic, fortran, cobol, and lisp
are just a few. these are all high-level languages. one can also write programs in low-level
languages called assembly languages, although this is more difficult. low-level languages
are closer to the language used by a computer, while high-level languages are closer to
human languages.
eventually, every program must be translated into a machine language that the computer
can understand. this translation is performed by compilers, interpreters, and assemblers.
when you buy software, you normally buy an executable version of a program. this
means that the program is already in machine language -- it has already been compiled
and assembled and is ready to execute.