Computer Code

Source code is the human-readable instructions written in a programming language that are used to create computer programs. It is written by programmers and can be easily understood and modified by them. Source code is composed of various syntax and keywords that are specific to the chosen programming language. This code is typically saved in plain text files with the file extension .c, .cpp, .java, .py, .rb, etc.

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On the other hand, machine code is the set of instructions in binary form that a computer's central processing unit (CPU) can directly execute.

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These instructions are written in the language of the CPU and are specific to the architecture and capabilities of the computer system. Machine code is composed of sequences of 0s and 1s and is incredibly difficult for humans to understand and modify. It is generated from the source code by a compiler or an assembler.

Object code, on the other hand, is an intermediate form of code that is produced by compiling the source code but not yet fully transformed into machine code. It is a partially compiled form of the source code that is not human-readable and not yet ready for execution on the CPU.

Now, let us explore the differences between a bit and bytes, as well as memory pages. A bit is the smallest unit of data in a computer and can have a value of either 0 or 1. It is the fundamental building block of all digital data and is used to represent the on/off state of electronic devices. A byte, on the other hand, is a unit of digital information that consists of 8 bits. It is the standard unit of measurement for memory size and file size in computing.

In terms of memory pages, a memory page refers to a fixed-length block of virtual memory that is managed by the operating system and the memory management unit (MMU) of a computer system. The size of a memory page can vary depending on the specific computer architecture and operating system, but it is typically 4 KB or 8 KB in size.

To illustrate these concepts, let us consider an example of source code. In the programming language Python, the following code snippet can be considered as source code:

python

def add_numbers(x, y):

    return x + y

This code snippet defines a function called "add_numbers" that takes two parameters, "x" and "y", and returns the sum of the two parameters.

Following the compilation of the source code, the object code can be represented as:

0001 0000 0010 0101

1110 1010 0111 1100

Lastly, the machine code, specific to the CPU architecture, would look something like:

10010010 01110111

10101001 11011101

Source code is the human-readable instructions that programmers write to create computer programs, while machine code is the binary instructions that the computer's CPU can directly execute. Object code is the intermediate form of code produced during the compilation process.