human text, ASCII text as input and output zeroes and ones that represent that program in a manner that the CPU, interesting, dammit, not installed on this computer.

编译器以人输入的文本，ASCII码为输入,它输出一些cpu实际上可以理解的，在这台计算机上没有安装。

哈佛公开课 - 计算机科学课程节选