Find out how source code is compiled for different programming languages and computer architectures, including the evolution from FORTRAN to CLR and JIT compilers.

These conversion programs turn the programmer's source code, which is what the programmer writes, into machine language (machine code). See assembly language, compiler and interpreter.

Assembly language is a text representation of the machine code your CPU executes I’m no stranger to assembly languages, but I’m not sure I know a modern and defensible answer to this question.

Assembly, or asm, features "a very strong (generally one-to-one) correspondence between the language and the architecture's machine code instructions," according to Wikipedia.