Learning about compilers and programming languages

For one of our week one lessons, we watched a video “Programming Computers with Compilers”. The video explained the concepts of CPU’s, programming languages and compilers.

Computers use languages that are not human friendly to perform tasks. As humans, reading and writing programs in the language of computers is almost impossible. We need a more human friendly language. In 1952, Grace Hopper a Navy programmer devised a way to do this. She developed a program that would translate human readable programs into computer language. She called this a ‘compiler’.

Compilers are used to translate programs that we write into the language that the computer can understand. Another way to think of this is the compiler translates programs that are easy to write into instructions that are easy for the computer to understand. They form a bridge between the human programming and the computer executing the instructions.