From machine code to a language: free-recall review
Free-recall prompts across the unit. Answer each in your own words first, then reveal the model answer and compare.
Retrieval beats re-reading. For each prompt, say or write a full answer from memory before you open the model answer — the effort of recall is what makes the material stick.
Reconstruct the unit’s spine without looking back: the assembler’s one-to-one rule, why high-level languages exist, compile vs interpret vs JIT, what the runtime provides, and the full source-to-execution pipeline.
- 01What does an assembler do, and what is the one-to-one rule?
- 02Assembly already gives machine code readable names. Why invent high-level languages on top of it?
- 03Contrast a compiler and an interpreter by what they produce and when they translate.
- 04What is JIT compilation, and what problem does the warm-up period reflect?
- 05What is the runtime, and what four services does it typically provide?
- 06Trace the six stages from source text to the CPU executing your program.
If you could reconstruct each answer from memory, you hold the unit’s spine: the assembler translates assembly one-to-one to machine code; high-level languages add productivity and portability through abstraction; a compiler translates everything ahead of time while an interpreter translates statement by statement at run time, and JIT compiles hot spots on the fly after a warm-up; the runtime supplies memory management, the call stack, the standard library, and the VM beneath your code; and the six-stage pipeline carries every program from source text to the CPU’s fetch-decode-execute loop.
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