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No, that isn't true. Java and JavaScript are typically run through a good, optimizing JIT runtime; Python rarely is. Hence the general classification.



Go isn’t run through an optimising runtime either. Plenty of compiled languages aren’t. However Python code is still transpiled to stack based byte code that runs on a virtual machine.

If you want to get pedantic then that byte code is interpreted but frankly where do you draw the line, are retro console emulators interpreters since they translate instructions from on architecture to another in much the same way? Technically yes but we don’t like to describe them in that way.

This is why I keep saying term “interpreted language” used to mean something quite specific in the 80s and 90s but these days it’s pretty much just slang for “JIT”.




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