Eli5: If a compiler is a program that converts your code into binary form for the computer, unless my understanding is incorrect and it isn’t just a program, wouldn’t the compiler also need a compiler to run it since how do you run a program without a compiler?
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Compilers don’t run code, they just convert it into a form that processors can work with.
Processors are fundamentally circuits that are hard wired to do certain things when they are given a certain combination of 1’s and 0’s, and if you string enough of these small functions together you can do any computational task. Compilers make this code out of more human readable code, though it is possible to just program something directly in machine language if you really wanted to which is how things worked before compilers were invented and how the first compiler was made.
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