Computer Science Programming Basics in Ruby

2.6 The Interpreter Process and Ruby

We now have covered the general concepts of computer systems embodied in a Von Neumann–style machine. We stated that programs and the data used by them reside in central memory, which can be replenished by various peripheral devices. We also stated that the memory stores its content in bits—binary digits consisting of 1’s and 0’s.

Gem of Wisdom

Programs in Ruby or any other programming language are strictly human-readable. However, a computer only understands only instructions that are encoded as a sequence of 1s and 0s (binary digits). Thus, we use another program called an interpreter (done one step at a time) or a compiler (done for all steps) that translates the English-like programming language to binary machine instruction codes.

In the following chapters we will introduce various algorithms or processes designed to solve problems. Among all possible ways to introduce and express the algorithms, we have chosen the Ruby programming language. This language, and other programming languages, express the algorithms via sequences of unambiguous sentences called statements. These are written using the Latin character set, digits in decimal notation, and special symbols, such as =, ,, >, and others. Clearly, these are not binary digits, so these are not programs that can be directly executed by a computer. What procedure is used to accept programs written in a language like Ruby and causes them to be performed or, as we say, executed, by a computer? ...