The terms ''high-level'' and ''low-level'' are inherently relative. Some decades ago, the [[C (programming language)|C language]], and similar languages, were most often considered "high-level". Many programmers today might refer to C as low-level.
Assembly language may itself be regarded as a higher level (but often still one-to-one if used without [[Macro (computer science)|macro]]s) representation of [[machine code]], as it supports concepts such as constants and (limited) expressions, sometimes even variables, procedures, and [[data structure]]s. [[Machine code]], in its turn, is inherently at a slightly higher level than the [[microcode]] or [[micro-operation]]s used internally in many processors.
