A historical question

[Paul Watson]

"Larry Bates" <lbates at swamisoft.com> wrote in message
news:M56dnRAyXdIUjKLcRVn-hw at comcast.com...
> Unless I'm mistaken it is nearly impossible to
> "execute" any software without translating the
> source into some intermediate (read bytecode) set
> of tokens and operators.  All interpreters must
> parse the source code and create some structured
> representation (even if it is only internal) that
> is normally VERY different from the source code
> itself.  Some interpreters never save out this
> "byte code", but it exists nevertheless.
>
> Larry Bates
> Syscon, Inc.
>
> "Jerald" <jfj at freemail.gr> wrote in message
> news:chmphe$21tc$1 at ulysses.noc.ntua.gr...
> > Hi.
> >
> > I'd like to know when python started working with bytecode.
> > It seems natural that in the first python implementations
> > code was really interpreted : executed directly.
> >
> > As a result, in the first days, when the py-programmer
> > said:
> >
> >    def foo ():
> >        print 'foo'
> >
> > python stored the function body and executed it each time
> > foo was called. In some time it was decided to compile
> > this to bytecode, optimize it and call the bytecode instead.
> >
> > Is it so?
> >
> > I am very curious.
> >
> >
> > Gerald

Agreed.  However, we should also consider that "compiled" excutable images
in machine language are simply bytecodes to the processor microcode.

Now... If we had a processor for which we could write microcode to execute
Python or Parrot bytecode, ...