How was the first compiler, compiled!

A compiler is a special type of computer program that translates a human readable text file into a form that the computer can more easily understand. At its most basic level, a computer can only understand two things, a 1 and a 0. At this level, a human will operate very slowly and find the information contained in the long string of 1s and 0s incomprehensible. A compiler is a computer program that bridges this gap. The original sequence is usually called the source code and the output called object code.

Towards the end of the 1950s, machine-independent programming languages were first proposed. Subsequently, several experimental compilers were developed. The first compiler was written by Grace Hopper, a pioneering computer scientist, in 1952, for the A-0 programming language. She said that she invented it because she was lazy and wished that "the programmer may return to being a mathematician."

The FORTRAN team led by John Backus at IBM is generally credited as having introduced the first complete compiler, in 1957. COBOL was an early language to be compiled on multiple architectures, in 1960.

In the beginning, compilers were very simple programs that could only translate symbols into the bits, the 1s and 0s, the computer understood. Programs were also very simple, composed of a series of steps that were originally translated by hand into data the computer could understand. This was a very time consuming task, so portions of this task were automated or programmed, and the first compiler was written. This program assembled, or compiled, the steps required to execute the step by step program.

These simple compilers were used to write a more sophisticated compiler. With the newer version, more rules could be added to the compiler program to allow a more natural language structure for the human programmer to operate with. This made writing programs easier and allowed more people to begin writing programs. As more people started writing programs, more ideas about writing programs were offered and used to make more sophisticated compilers. In this way, compiler programs continue to evolve, improve and become easier to use.