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copied!<p>It's called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_%28compilers%29">Bootstrapping</a>, quoting from Wikipedia:</p> <blockquote> <p>If one needs a compiler for language X to obtain a compiler for language X (which is written in language X), how did the first compiler get written? Possible methods to solving this chicken or the egg problem include:</p> </blockquote> <ol> <li>Implementing an interpreter or compiler for language X in language Y. Niklaus Wirth reported that he wrote the first Pascal compiler in Fortran.</li> <li>Another interpreter or compiler for X has already been written in another language Y; this is how Scheme is often bootstrapped.</li> <li>Earlier versions of the compiler were written in a subset of X for which there existed some other compiler; this is how some supersets of Java, Haskell, and the initial Free Pascal compiler are bootstrapped.</li> <li>The compiler for X is cross compiled from another architecture where there exists a compiler for X; this is how compilers for C are usually ported to other platforms. Also this is the method used for Free Pascal after the initial bootstrap.</li> <li>Writing the compiler in X; then hand-compiling it from source (most likely in a non-optimized way) and running that on the code to get an optimized compiler. Donald Knuth used this for his WEB literate programming system.</li> </ol> <p>And if you are interested, <a href="https://github.com/mortdeus/legacy-cc">here</a> is Dennis Richie's first C compiler source.</p>

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