language interpreters/ interpreted languages weaknesses?

[Frank Mitchell]

Stephan Houben wrote in message ...
>m.faassen at vet.uu.nl (Martijn Faassen) writes:
>Of course, Sun marketed the fact that Java used bytecode as if it was
>something revolutionary. "No, it is not interpreted, it is compiled to
>Byte Code!" Of course, all those other languages which had been called
>"interpreted" where actually compiled to byte code since the
>beginning of time. Byte-code compilation is really as old as the Sun. ;-)

Right, but as the guy who hired me into Sun pointed out, it's the first time
(AFAIK) that a byte code format has been fully specified and published, with
the intent of transferring bytecode among different implementations.

If someone could point me to a previous bytecode format that worked in more
implementations than the one that issued it, and stayed stable from revision
to revision, I will stand corrected.  (Some languages are automatically
disqualified: Perl, C-Python, Lua, and Tcl *have* only one implementation,)

Also, has the C-Python bytecode format has changed over time, such that old
.pyc files had to be recompiled to work correctly?  I've only known Python
for a year, and I've yet to see that problem.


Frank