language interpreters/ interpreted languages weaknesses?

[William Tanksley]

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