Reverse-engineering is used for many purposes: as a learning tool; as a way to make new, compatible products that are cheaper than what’s currently on the market.

reverse engineering can be an invaluable tool for learning how to use a particular programming language or how to work on a particular type of application, beginners can use the technique to improve their skills.

Whether it’s rebuilding a car engine or diagramming a sentence, people can learn about many things simply by taking them apart and putting them back together again. That, in a nutshell, is the concept behind reverse-engineering—breaking something down in order to understand it, build a copy or improve it.

A process that was originally applied only to hardware, reverse-engineering is now applied to software, databases and even human DNA. Reverse-engineering is especially important with computer hardware and software. Programs are written in a language, say C++ or Java, that’s understandable by other programmers. But to run on a computer, they have to be translated by another program, called a compiler, into the ones and zeros of machine language.