Beneath Abstraction: Code to Execution

Guest Lecture at the University of Pretoria · 4 September 2026

Overview

An introduction to the journey from high-level programming languages to machine execution, examining the layers of abstraction between source code and processor execution.

The lecture explores compilation, executable formats, machine code, instruction set architectures, and processor microarchitecture, providing an overview of how software is translated into instructions and ultimately executed by hardware.

The complete presentation slides are available upon request. If you are interested in the material, feel free to get in touch.