I’m an old guy and I’ve been programming for a long time. Virtually all of that programming has involved using a compiler or an assembler. Until I dabbled in AWK, Perl, and Python and started using Giuile, my only use of an interpreted language was some early recreational use of BASIC.
From my very first programming language—FORTRAN (gasp) as an undergraduate Math student—I have been fascinated with compilers and the compiling process. In my career, I’ve implemented a bunch of little languages and even worked on a large scale compiler.
It would, therefore, never occur to me that any programmer would not understand what a compiler is or does. Not how they work—that’s a bit of a dark art—but just what they are and what they do. Apparently, in this as in so many things, I’m wrong.
Nader Naguib says that he’s seen a lot of beginners who don’t know about compilers so he published a short video on what they are and what they do. It’s doubtful that any Irreal reader is confused on the matter but if you have a junior colleague who is, this is a good two minute introduction. The video is biased towards the C/C++ languages but really applies to any language even if it doesn’t need a preprocessor.