Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (OCR) GCSE Computer Science Practice Exam

High-level languages are designed to be easy for humans to read and write, providing strong abstraction from the details of the underlying hardware. C++ and Java are excellent examples of high-level languages. They allow programmers to write code using syntax and constructs that are more understandable, using functions, loops, and conditional statements which resemble natural language.

These languages include features such as object-oriented programming, which facilitates code reuse and organization, making it simpler to manage larger programs. Additionally, they typically run in a virtual machine or are compiled into lower-level languages for execution, which abstracts away much of the complex machine-level operations.

In contrast, other options provided consist of languages that do not fit the definition of high-level languages. Assembly and machine language represent low-level programming languages that are much closer to the hardware and require an understanding of the computer’s architecture. HTML and CSS are markup languages used for structuring and styling web pages, rather than programming languages in the conventional sense. Finally, while FORTRAN and COBOL are considered high-level languages, the specific selection of C++ and Java highlights the most contemporary and widely used high-level programming languages among modern developers.