What is the difference between make and gcc?

Question

The last sentence in the article caught my eye

[F]or C/C++ developers and students interested in learning to program in C/C++ rather than users of L

Answer 1

'gcc' is the compiler - the program that actually turns the source code into an executable. You have to tell it where the source code is, what to output, and various other things like libraries and options.

'make' is more like a scripting language for compiling programs. It's a way to hide all the details of compiling your source (all those arguments you have to pass the compiler). You script all of the above details once in the Makefile, so you don't have to type it every time for every file. It will also do nifty things like only recompile source files that have been updated, and handle dependancies (if I recompile this file, I will then need to recompile THAT file.)