language interpreters/ interpreted languages weaknesses?
William Tanksley
wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net
Thu Sep 2 22:45:53 EDT 1999
On 2 Sep 1999 10:21:31 GMT, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>William Tanksley <wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net> wrote:
>> Java's not interpreted, though -- I've never seen ANY Java interpreter.
>> Java is always compiled, usually to bytecode, and then the bytecode
>> machine is emulated.
>Um, I was under the impression that this is what a modern interpreter
>actually does? Parse the source to bytecode and execute the bytecode.
>After all, Python does the same, right?
If you assume Python is an interpreter, then yes, that's a counterexample.
My point is that Python isn't an interpreter -- or rather, isn't one by
any meaningful definition of the word.
I also made the point that Oberon, commonly known as a compiled language,
is far closer to being an interpreter than is Python, because Oberon saves
to disk (or executes in memory) the parse structure of the code itself,
rather than a compiled format.
Currently, all non-Forth interactive systems (except Oberon) are actually
[bytecode] compilers. Tomorrow all systems, interactive or otherwise, may
output abstract syntax trees.
>Martijn
--
-William "Billy" Tanksley
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