compiler
A compiler is a program that translates code written in a high-level programming language into a form a machine can execute.
A compiler translates an entire program's source code ahead of time into machine code or a lower-level intermediate form. It differs from an interpreter, which reads and runs code line by line.
Compilers let programmers write in human-readable languages instead of machine code, and languages such as C and FORTRAN are typically run through a compiler.
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Articles covering this entry
The compiler: Grace Hopper's work, starting with Flow-Matic, let programmers use English-like keywords instead of raw machine code.
They ran repeated rounds of profile-guided experiments, examined compiler output and reshaped the Rust code so the compiler could vectorize it automatically, me…