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第一段
Program Development
Software designers create new programs by using special applications programs, often called utility programs or development programs. A programmer uses another type of program called a text editor to write the new program in a special notation called a programming language. With the text editor, the programmer creates a text file, which is an ordered list of instructions, also called the program source file. The individual instructions that make up the program source file are called source code. At this point, a special applications program translates the source code into machine language, or object code—a format that the operating system will recognize as a proper program and be able to execute.
Three types of applications programs translate from source code to object code: compilers, interpreters, and assemblers. The three operate differently and on different types of programming languages, but they serve the same purpose of translating from a programming language into machine language.
A compiler translates text files written in a high-level programming language—such as FORTRAN, C, or Pascal—from the source code to the object code all at once. This differs from the approach taken by interpreted languages such as BASIC, in which a program is translated into object code statement by statement as each instruction is executed. The advantage to interpreted languages is that they can begin executing the program immediately instead of having to wait for all of the source code to be compiled. Changes can also be made to the program fairly quickly without having to wait for it to be compiled again. The disadvantage of interpreted languages is that they are slow to execute, since the entire program must be translated one instruction at a time, each time the program is run. On the other hand, compiled languages are compiled only once and thus can be executed by the computer much more quickly than interpreted languages.