Which of the following best defines assembly language?

Assembly language is best defined as a representation of machine language instructions. This programming language is closely related to the architecture of a computer's CPU and provides a low-level interface for programming. It uses mnemonics and symbols to represent machine code instructions, making it easier for programmers to read and write compared to raw binary or hexadecimal machine code.

While high-level programming languages abstract away the hardware details and offer more user-friendly syntax, assembly language allows for precise control over hardware and is specific to a particular computer architecture. This is why assembly language is often used in performance-critical applications, such as operating systems or embedded systems.

The other options describe different types of programming languages or environments, but they do not capture the essence of assembly language. A high-level programming language would offer abstractions that are far removed from the underlying hardware operations. A graphical programming environment focuses on visual interfaces for programming, and a scripting language for web pages relates to languages used for web development, like JavaScript, which are much higher-level and not directly tied to machine instructions.