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A low-level programming language is a programming language that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's instruction set architecture. Generally this refers to either machine code or assembly language. The word "low" refers to the small or nonexistent amount of abstraction between the language and machine language; because of this, low-level languages are sometimes described as being "close to the hardware."

Low-level languages can be converted to machine code without using a compiler or interpreter, and the resulting code runs directly on the processor. A program written in a low-level language can be made to run very quickly, and with a very small memory footprint; an equivalent program in a high-level language will be more heavyweight. Low-level languages are simple, but are considered difficult to use, due to the numerous technical details which must be remembered.

By comparison, a high-level programming language isolates the execution semantics of a computer architecture from the specification of the program, which simplifies development.

Low-level languages are closer to the hardware than are high-level programming languages, which are closer to human languages.