Chapter 2. Understanding Apple's Programming Tools
To write a program, you need at least two tools: an editor and a compiler. An editor acts like a word processor and lets you write instructions using a programming language such as Objective-C. A compiler converts your instructions (called code) and compiles (or translates) them into a language that computers can understand, which is called machine code. When you buy a program, that program is stored in a file that contains nothing but machine code.
Every time you run a program on your computer, whether it's a word processor or a web browser, you're using a program that someone wrote in an editor using a programming language and converted into machine code using a compiler.
Understanding Editors ...
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