system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How was the first software and compiler made?
gpt
The first program generators were assemblers, that translate assembly language into machine code. Those were written in machine code.

The first higher-level programming languages were written using assemblers.

Edit: the first *software* was written in machine code. It took a while before assemblers were developed and became common, because an assembler is not an entirely trivial program.
Machine code was entered via switches, or using things like punched paper tape.