Which number base system is used by low level languages

Low-level languages are programming languages that are very close to the hardware of a computer, meaning they communicate almost directly with the processor. The two main low-level languages are machine language and assembly language.

Machine language, the lowest of the low-level languages, consists entirely of the binary number system, that is, sequences of \(0\)s and \(1\)s. Every instruction a processor executes is ultimately represented as a pattern of binary digits, since the processor's circuits only recognise two electrical states: on and off. Assembly language uses short mnemonic codes instead of raw binary, but it still translates directly, instruction for instruction, into binary machine code, keeping the underlying language of execution firmly rooted in binary.

Duodecimal (base 12), hexadecimal (base 16), and decimal (base 10) number systems are used by humans for convenience when reading or writing binary values in a shorter form, particularly hexadecimal in programming and debugging contexts, but the processor itself does not execute instructions in these bases; it converts everything down to binary internally.

Exam reminder: always link low-level languages and direct hardware execution to the binary number system, since that is the only number system a computer's processor genuinely operates in.