“computer programs are much like cookbook recipes. Both offer specific directions to accomplish a task. Yet, while chefs write their cookbooks to be read by people, programmers can’t write for computers in the same way, because computers don’t natively comprehend programming languages. Computers speak a binary language of 0s and 1s, so to get a computer to perform my job, I have to convert my C++ code into a computer-consumable binary form using a program called a compiler. This conversion process of human-readable to machine-runnable is called compilation or building. This translation procedure also explains why lines of code written in a programming language are called source code. They’re the source material a compiler builds into (i.e., translates into) binary code the computer can execute.”