Overcoming Language Barriers

What language do computers speak in?

Computers speak in binary, meaning all the data they process is encoded in a series of 1's and 0's. These 1's and 0's represent a flow of electronic signals within the CPU. Binary code, more often referred to as machine code, constitutes all the data we see on the screens. This leads to the need of another interface because humans don't read or speak in binary. Software programmers and engineers write their software in programming languages such as Java, Python, or C, which is human readable code. How then, do computers understand that?

The Compiler

This essential interface between software and hardware is known as the compiler. A compiler, is itself, a series of programs that act as a translator between programming languages and machine code. Each programming language has a different compiler that was designed to do this job. Code written by the programmer is known as "source code", whereas the translated version interpreted by the computer is known as "executable code". A prominent feature of compilers is that they run a series of checks, which ensures the programmer writes their code in a specific way that adheres to the language they are using. Thus, we can see the compiler acts as the interface that overcomes this "language barrier" between the programmer and the machine. Assembly is another programming language that is one-step above in readability than machine code. I've tried coding in it. It sucks.