Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade([EMAIL PROTECTED])@Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 11:29:59PM -0700: > > I would really like to take the opportunity here to point out that > the difference isn't between "real programming" languages and > "scripting" languages, but rather between the categories of languages > which are interpreted, runtime-compiled, or just-in-time compiled > versus categories of languages which are pre-compiled to binary > executables. >
I've always found this terminology confusing. My own perception is that there is only pre-compiled and interpreted. The interpreted languages are always compiled as far as I can tell, and that byte-compiled code is almost always kept around after the first run to reduce the amount of work required for subsequent runs. I'm hesitant to call those files "byte-compiled" objects because I'm not confident that's what they really are. So, what is the difference between JIT compiling and just interpreting and saving the compiled objects (runtime compiled)? Java obviously gets compiled in a separate step, rather than happening at the time of the first execution; is there something special about byte compiling Java code that would differentiate it in other ways from the interpreted model? As usual, the terminology and jargon is a bigger barrier to comprehension than the facts. Wade Curry syntaxman -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
