2. Translators
People and computers do not speak the same language.
People write programs in order to instruct a computer to do something.
The software instructions are written as a carefully formatted set of text statements known as 'source code'. Source code has to follow the grammar rules of the language being used.
Source code can be written in a 'high level' language such as Python or a 'low level' language called 'Assembly language'.
However, a computer doesn't understand our nicely formatted, readable language. Instead it runs machine code (object code) which form the instruction set of that particular CPU.
Each machine code instruction is actually a binary number, which for readability is represented in hexadecimal format. For example, the instruction below is a typical high level language command
PRINT File
While a machine code instruction (in hexadecimal) looks like this
A3B4
Because of these different requirements, there needs to be something to convert people-friendly source code into computer-friendly machine code. This is the role of a translator.
Translator: converts one computer language into another. Usually it translates source code into machine code.
There are three main types of translators
- Assembler
- Compiler
- Interpreter
Challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you
Click on this link: What is a compiler