machine language

Definition

Programming language that can be directly understood and obeyed by a machine (computer) without conversion (translation). Different for each type of CPU, it is the native binary language (comprised of only two characters: 0 and 1) of the computer and is difficult to be read and understood by humans. Programmers commonly use more English-like languages (called high level languages) such as Basic, C, Java, etc., to write programs which are then translated into machine language (called a low level language) by an assembler, compiler, or interpreter.