Python's Performance

[Charles Krug]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 11:21:18 -0700, Donn Cave <donn at u.washington.edu>
wrote:
>> Iron-
>> Python).  is it still an interpreter if it generates machine code?
> 
> Is what an interpreter?
> 
> I am not very well acquainted with these technologies, but it sounds
> like variations on the implementation of an interpreter, with no
> really compelling distinction between them.  

An important point made by Tannenbaum is this:

Once you have a machine that executes instructions (what he called
hardware or "Level Zero Machine", then you can create higher level
machines that execute code written in the language of that machine.

For the purposes of writing C, for example, we pretend that we have this
magical machine that "runs C code," or more typically, "the machine that
runs (insert OS name) C code."

When the Level n machine isn't fast enough, we go to the level n-1
machine . . . C or Java for us, or assembly, but the model remains valid
until the point where you bump up against the underlying logic gates.

While we don't talk about the "Virtual Machine" the way Java folks do,
Tannenbaum's model is still useful for thinking about such things.