Recently I have been extremely interested in language development, I've got multiple working front ends and have had various systems for executing the code. I've decided I would like to try to develop a virtual machines type system. (Kind of like the JVM but much simpler of course) So I've managed to create a basic working instruction set with a stack and registers but I'm just curious about how some things should be implemented.
In Java for example after you've written a program you compile it with the java compiler and it creates a binary (.class) for the JVM to execute. I don't understand how this is done, how does the JVM interpret this binary, what's the transition from human readable instructions to this binary, how could I create something similar?
Thanks for any help/suggestions!