Compilation

How source code becomes a running program is often opaque: "Just run the compiler" is all that developers normally need to know. Writing an interpreter from scratch—including its lexer and parser—is an illuminating challenge.

Compilation and linking are two very fundamental processes that happen all the time during C++ software development. However, what happens during these processes? How does the compiler go from your neatly organized source code to a binary file that the machine understands? In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Daniel Trejo explains how a C++ compiler works with some of the basic language constructs to answer some common questions that are related to these processes.