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How Source Code Becomes a Running Program: Compilers and Interpreters Explained

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A technical deep-dive published on DEV Community breaks down the full pipeline that transforms source code into an executing program, covering stages such as lexing, parsing, abstract syntax trees, and semantic analysis. The article challenges the common binary distinction between compilers and interpreters, arguing the two approaches form a spectrum rather than separate categories. It uses Python, Java, and JavaScript's V8 engine as real-world examples of systems that blend both compilation and interpretation techniques. The piece walks through a simplified lexer implementation to illustrate how raw character streams are broken into meaningful tokens as a foundational first step. Understanding these fundamentals, the author argues, helps developers better interpret error messages, reason about performance, and evaluate programming languages and tools.

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