Compiling...
When you write a C program and click "Build and Run" in your IDE (or type gcc main.c in your terminal), it seems like magic. Your text file is instantly turned into a running application.
However, it is not a single step. The translation of your C source code into an executable machine code file actually happens in four distinct stages. Understanding these stages will make debugging errors much easier in the future.
The four stages of compilation are:
