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Digital Literacy

Jeniffer Valdez
Jeniffer Valdez
243 Points

Compiling

Can someone explain/clarify when a higher language needs to be compiled? Quiz questioned implied "Higher language have to be..." but I didn't get that take-away from the video. If it is a requirement, what makes it so? If no, what are the different scenarios in which a higher language would be required or not required to be compiled?

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,186 Points

There's basically two ways for code in a computer language to run.

You didn't provide a link to the lesson so I might be diverging a bit from the teaching here.

But one way for a program to run is to compile it, which converts it into machine code that the computer can execute directly. And the other way is it interpret it, where a program (which was already compiled) reads the language and performs the appropriate steps in the computer for it. So a higher-level language program must always be either compiled or interpreted. And it could be that the interpreted option may not have been discussed in the lesson so the correct quiz answer might only be "compiled".