Tag: Grace Hopper

Compilers take your source code and convert those instructions into a language that the computer hardware can understand, almost always a low-level binary machine language. Douglas Hofstadter compared looking at raw machine code to trying to read DNA one atom at time. It’s doable, but not easy, so it makes sense that we use higher level languages, like C, and then run them through the compiler to generate the machine code. But where did the idea of a compiler come from? Enter the Queen of Code, Grace Hopper.