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All computers
operate by following machine language programs, a long sequence of
instructions called machine code that is addressed to the hardware
of the computer and is written in binary notation, which uses only
the digits 1 and 0. First-generation languages, called machine languages,
required the writing of long strings of binary numbers to represent
such operations as add, subtract, and compare. Later
improvements allowed octal, decimal, or hexadecimal representation
of the binary strings.
Writing programs in machine language is impractical
(it is tedious and error prone). Symbolic, also known as assembly or
second-generation, languages were introduced in the early 1950s. They
use simple mnemonics such as A for add or M for multiply, which are translated
into machine language by a computer program called an assembler. The
assembler then turns that program into a machine language program. An
extension of such a language is the macro instruction, a mnemonic (such
as "READ" ) for
which the assembler substitutes a series of simpler mnemonics. The resulting
machine language programs, however, are specific to one type of computer
and will usually not run on a computer with a different type of central
processing unit (CPU).
You are lucky. We use Java.
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one
more bug.
Links:
Java help line