Beginner question: What is binding?

Question

I was trying to understand the difference between early and late binding, and in the process realized that the concept of binding is nebulous to me. I think I understand that it relates to the way data-as-a-word-of-memory is linked to type-as-a-set-of-language-features but I am not sure those are the right concepts. Also, how does understanding this deeply help people become better programmers?

Please note: This question is not "what is late v. early binding" or "what are the trade-offs between the 2". Those already exist here.

Thanks,

JDelage

Answer 1

At its simplest, binding is the association of a symbol within a program with an address in memory.

For example: a function call in C. When you declare a function, the compiler records the function's name and the location of its code within the object file. When you call a function from a separately compiled file, the compiler records a reference to that name in the place where the call occurs. The linker is responsible for binding these two references, so that the call will reference the correct memory location.