Computers don’t simply "understand" code in the way humans do. They rely on a highly sophisticated series of steps to ...

C differs from other programming languages, like Python, in that you need to compile programs before you can run them. You’ll typically do this in C using the command “make”.

While the old C++ compiler, cfront, needed special steps to compile (since it was built using C++), you can build cake for Windows or Linux easily.

Find out how source code is compiled for different programming languages and computer architectures, including the evolution from FORTRAN to CLR and JIT compilers.

Few programming languages can match C for sheer speed and machine-level power. This statement was true 50 years ago, and it’s still true today.

With no branches, each line of code executes. In fact, though, the compiler makes a few compromises including using a jump to call external functions and a floating point instruction.