Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming

["Kevin Lawton" <kepla@btinternet.com>]

Randy McLaughlin <randy@nospam.com> wrote:
| "Kevin Lawton" <kepla@btinternet.com> wrote in message
| news:bd96m2$omr$5@hercules.btinternet.com...
| <snip>
|| I have used Cobol and/or Fortran on over a dozen different platforms
|| and in every case I can recall it does not require any extension of
|| the language in order to link to a module whos source code was
|| written in another language. Whatever the source language, It is
|| compiled to object code and is then linked to other object modules
|| to become an executable. Of course, with the exception of
|| interpreted languages like BASIC or Java. It is thus the function of
|| the object linker to resolve references between modules. It requires
|| no extension or mis-use of the source language.
|
| You may not have read the post correectly.  The post was to refute the
| statement that someone made that to be a complete computer programming
| language you must be able to do anything you can do with asm.  Having
| a program that links to a program written in asm does not show that
| cobol or other programs can do the same thing as asm.
|
| I do agree that the ability to link to other languages extends the
| power of languages.

Okey-dokey:  So notwithstanding the somewhat obvioous point that low-level
languages (like assembler) will probably better facilitate low-level access
(such as direct memory-mapped port access) than high-level languages, then
just what sort of tasks are being considered to be possible in assembley
language but not in a high level language like Algol, Fortran, Cobol, C,
Pascal or Java ?
Kevin.
P.S.:   BTW can anyone remember what the original point being discussed in
this thread was ?