CDP 196 compilers
Compilers are required tools for software development. Essentially, both tools translate your written code into something that a machine can use.
Most of the details of this episode come from the book "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, & Tools" by Alfred V. Aho, Monica S. Lam, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman. It's an excellent book for deeply understanding how compilers actually work under the hood. You may have heard this book refered to as the "Dragon" book because of it's over-the-top awesome cover.
There is a lot going on in the process of converting your high-level code into results that come out of your machine. While you may not have to worry about this stuff on a day to day basis, it's important to understand what is actually happening to convert your code into something the machine can use. In many cases, understanding what is going on under the hood can help you troubleshoot certain kinds of performance problems and other weird issues in your code. Additionally, the understanding of how compilers work can also be informative when dealing with certain kinds of problems in higher level code as well.
