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Discussion on: What Is An "Interpreted" Language?

 
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Jason C. McDonald • Edited

Since the beginning Java has had javac- the "Java compiler". Surely having a compiler makes you compiled.

Remember the definition, which I didn't make up.

Compiler — converts code to either source code in another language, or to bytecode. (Contrast with assembler.)

You can compile to anything, but if the product of the compilation is not actually executable in and of itself, but requires an interpreter to execute, isn't that still an interpreted language?

After all, Python compiles to Python Bytecode (*.pyc), but that still can only be executed through the Python interpreter. According to the language's own documentation, Python is an interpreted language, and not a compiled language.