Introduction

The Compilation Process (Definitions)

The C++ source code is your program.
The compiler is a program that translate your C++ code into object code.
Object code consists of machine instructions and information on how to load the program into memory.
A linker program takes the object code from your program and the code from the various libraries and builds them into an executable file.
Libraries contain the (already translated) code used by your program (such as iostream).