# Programs that computers can directly recognize and execute are machine language programs. Machine language is a low-level computer language that is executed directly by computer hardware. It uses binary codes (0s and 1s) to represent instructions and data, including specific opcodes, registers, memory addresses, etc. Machine language programs are executed directly on the computer's central processing unit (CPU).
However, writing and understanding machine language programs is difficult and tedious for most people. Therefore, the development of high-level languages has enabled programmers to write programs using more human-readable code. High-level languages (such as C, Java, Python, etc.) require a compiler or interpreter to convert the source code into machine language code so that the computer can execute it directly. So, from a practical point of view, most programs are written in a high-level language and converted through a compilation or interpretation process into a machine language program that the computer can execute.