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

For those very rare occasions when an app's source code is all that's available, Wired details how to compile it yourself. Photo by artonice.

Nuitka, a compiler that transforms Python into C for the sake of both performance gains and a more portable runtime, has reached its 0.6 release—a milestone that lays the groundwork for future ...