Why Python is not both an interpreter and a compiler?

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Laura Creighton <lac at openend.se>:

> But are Guile programs small?

They can be tiny because libguile-2.0.so, the interpreter, is a dynamic
library and is installed on the computer. It's barely different from how
compiled C programs can be a few kilobytes in size because libc.so is
dynamic.

Emacs is a lisp interpreter. As part of its installation, emacs dumps
core, and the executable core file is installed as the editor we know
and love. That way, the most useful lisp modules are already preloaded
in the binary, executable image of the editor.

On my machine, the emacs executable is 15 megabytes in size.


Marko