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Nelvin Ochieng
Nelvin Ochieng

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What Really Happens When You Press "Run"?

We press Run almost every day, but have you ever wondered what happens behind the scenes?

After attending a conference on Compilers and Interpreters, I learned that our code doesn't go straight to the computer. It first goes through several stages: tokenization, parsing, Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) generation, semantic analysis, and finally compilation or interpretation before it can be executed.

It's amazing to think that what starts as human-readable code is transformed into machine instructions in just a fraction of a second.

As someone still learning software development, this gave me a new appreciation for what happens every time I press Run. Sometimes, understanding what's happening behind the scenes is just as exciting as writing the code itself.

What happens after you press "Run" on your machine?

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