to be honest, i have no idea what shaders are nor why they need to be compiled

>>735008894
shaders are a program that tells your gpu "hey, modify this texture (thats the static image that makes up the colors of a model) using this algorithm"
the advantages of this is that you can dynamically change shit based on inputs like where the camera is, where the pixel is on the screen, how far away the pixel is from the camera, or even where another camera is in relation to your players camera and the object that the shader is applied to, and much more.

Basically its like a miniature photoshop for textures that's context aware.

It has to be compiled because the programming language that the GPU understands is indecipherable to humans, so humans write in a higher level language thats easier to read and understand, and that gets compiled down into a language that the GPU understands.

>TLDR;
its a magic program your gpu understands that makes textures do fancy shit, humans cant read it so they write in a different language and it gets compiled to the gpu's language

no im not chatgpt, im just autistic

>>735008894
Code needs to be compiled to run in most modern coding languages. Game code is compiled before the game is shipped to you, because they don't want you to have their source code, just the compiled version you would struggle to reverse engineer by comparison and also no consumer would want to have to compile their games. The issues with shaders is that many modern games' code for shaders (things that handle how lighting and some visual effects look) needs to be compiled based on what GPU you have. Unlike the rest of the game code, this cannot be compiled ahead of time because you don't know what GPU someone will have. Furthermore they need be compiled for every object in the game, so a game update will cause a need for a recompile. In the past this was pretty fast and games could get away with doing it on the fly. If you've ever looked around quickly or run between rooms quickly and noticed a 3D game stutter, it might be because it was trying to quickly compile shader code. Now that games are becoming more visually complex and worlds bigger, this is no longer a viable option and so instead games now tend to have one big load time at first boot after an update/GPU update that just compiles them all.