Compiler vs Interpreter

Posted on August 6, 2020October 18, 2020 by Ankur Sachdeva

Before doing compiler vs interpreter, let’s first look at what they are and their purposes.

Both compiler and interpreter acts as a translator between computer and human (software developers). The computer understands machine language, also known as binary language. It is in the form of zeros’ and ones’. On the other hand, humans understand different languages, which is the collection of alphabets and letters. The most popular language is English.

A compiler takes the instruction written in the English language (programming language) and converts it into intermediate code. On the other hand, an interpreter converts to binary code. So we have added a few new terms here. Let’s have a detailed look at these. If you understand the terms machine language, intermediate language, and high-level language, you can skip to the compiler vs interpreter section.

Table of Contents

Machine Language

In computer science, machine language is a collection of two digits ZEROs’ (0s) and ONEs’ (1s). Because it is a base-2 number system, therefore, this language is also called binary language or binary code.

Wondering why only 0s and 1s? A computer is an electronic device consist of transistors. They can have either On or Off state. The 0 (zero) represents “off state” and 1 (one) represents the “on state” of a transistor.

Convert Text to Binary

The following tool converts any text or number into binary (machine language).

Please enter text:
Output in Machine (binary) Language:

High-level Language

In computer science, high-level language is also known as a programming language. A high-level language:

Is designed to simplify computer programming.
Consists of easy-to-read instructions for humans (usually software developers), which later converted to machine language.
Removes several sets of instructions to allow the computer to perform certain tasks. For example, to display Hello World on the screen, you can simply write System.Console.Write(“Hello World”); in C#. Is it not simple?

The majority of programming languages are considered high-level languages. Such as C++, C#, Objective C, Pascal, PHP, Python, etc.

Intermediate Language

Like we human beings speak different languages and have different ascent, computers do have different understanding of binary language. Wait! What? I just told you that computers understand only binary language that is zeros’ and ones’. My dear friend like English has different versions due to geographical differences, binary language also has it. The difference in machine architecture makes that machine to understand a certain set of commands differently than other machines. The developer machine may be using Intel’s processor on the other hand user is using an AMDs’ machine.

If an instruction is converted directly from high-level language to machine-language then it may break on certain machines. Therefore, it is required to be re-translated to the target machine. Compilers are special programs and having them on users’ machines does not make any sense.

Intermediate code is a machine-independent code. It lies between the machine-language and high-level language. It keeps the analysis portion the same for all the compilers, and therefore, there is no need to have a full native compiler.

Now to convert this simple line of code in machine language, compiler or interpreter are used. Even though they are used to convert high-level language code to machine-language but they are very different. Let’s have a look at the difference between a compiler and an interpreter.