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Cake day: August 31st, 2023

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  • first they had machine code
    then they wrote the assembler in machine code
    then they rewrote the assembler in assembly
    and assembled it with the machine code assembler
    then they wrote the C compiler in assembly
    and assembled it with the assembly assembler
    then they rewrote the C compiler in C
    and compiled it with the assembly C compiler
    then they had the C compiler
    and everything else was written in C

    (note: this is a massive oversimplification and ignores much of the history of programming languages, but it at least gets across the idea of how bootstrapping is done)