Talk:Interpreter (computing)

message: I'm not convinced of JIT being "several decades" old, at least with regard to Smalltalk.  "several decades" presumably is at least two.  I'm pretty sure that in December of 1984, Smalltalk did not do any JIT.  The bytecodes were strictly interpreted in all Smalltalk implementations of that day of which I've heard.  I'm not sure if or when JIT was introduced in the Smalltalk world, but it seems unlikely that it would have been deployed before the 1990s (or very late 1980s).
--Brouhaha 18:51, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Incremental compilation (pretty much the same thing as JIT) was used in Maclisp in the '70s. --FOo (talk) 20:56, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

text: "Efficient implementation of the Smalltalk-80 system" is a paper published in 1984 which describes JIT compilation and a whole lot of other techniques introduced back then and which form the basis of every modern Virtual Machine (inline caching comes to mind). --Blaisorblade (talk) 03:25, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  JIT 

message: "...the source language is compiled into "F code" (a bytecode) which is then interpreted by an architecture-independent virtual machine."
Shouldn't it say "architecture-dependent"? The bytecode is architecture-independent, the interpreter must be architecture-dependent...  --Arny 21:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why? Interpreters can be run in interpreters. --Gwern  (contribs) 21:17 16 November 2006 (GMT) 21:17, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  They CAN be, but the way the sentence is worded now, it says that all virtual machines are architecture-independent.  That is obviously not true.    I suggest that you just drop the qualifier and say "... which is then interpreted by a virtual machine." 66.32.88.47 21:23, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

text:  Right, since nobody seems to object, I'm going to change it. 66.32.15.77 00:28, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bytecode interpreter 

message: This has nothing to do with Evaluate yet theres a redirect! Jamhaw 20:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Evaluate

message: i've incuded a article of advaantages/disadvantages of intrpreter which is simple for average user to understand and relevant to waht people expect to find b/w interpreter  and compiler...
But this article is not fully complete ...
So kindly add new items to this article ...
regards
--gursimar singh mohar 20:06, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe this section, that was added by a single user (albeit somewhat cleaned up by another well-meaning user) should be deleted.  It is unsourced and somewhat arbitrary, and amounts to essentially original research and synthesis. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 17:07, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is surely not true currently - at least it is not original research but folklore (I wouldn't reference it if I were writing a paper). I didn't look (yet) at the history to see if there's any relation with what you discuss. --Blaisorblade (talk) 03:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Advantages vs. disadvantages

message: Isn't some kind of interpreter also used when dealing with natural language input to computer programs?  This aspect does not seem to be discussed in the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skysong263 (talk • contribs) 18:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  information missing 

message: There's a number of problems I can see with the article:
*It hasn't got a clear distinction between compiling and translating to a bytecode. The big difference is that compilatrion does overall semantic analysis not just syntactic analysis.
*There are no proper inline citations for most of what is said, it seems more like peoples thoughts.
In particular sections
*In the leader 'executes source code directly' gives no clear picture of what that is supposed to mean. Does it mean reads the text and does actions based on what iut reads immediately?
*It talks about 'some translation work like compilers' which blurs the distinction.
*In 'Bytecode interpreters' Forth is just translated, it is not compiled.
*Bit about control tables is stuck in for no good reason and confuses things.
*In 'Bytecode interpreters' Forth is just translated, it is not compiled.
*'Efficiency' and 'Advantages and disadvantages' just talks about slower execution and faster debug cycle. With a compiler many of the bugs are caught at compilation time rather than one at a time by debug. That is why it takes longer before it starts executing the first time.
*In distribution things like pcode, Java, .Net  and others produce a bytecode that can then be interpreted or translated into machine code for any computer.
*The 'Execution environment' bit is rather confused or wrong.
*I haven't the foggiest what the bit about 'Abstract Syntax Tree' is about. I think it is confused with compilation.
*In the 'Just in time compilation' .Net translates whole modules to machine code and caches the result, it does not typically go in for JIT as it is used in Java though it is not compiled to machine code in advance and the bytecode is not interpreted.
*There should be a disambiguation page for interpreter pointing to language interpretation, this article, the punched card and any bands etc with the name and any extra info about punched card interpreters moved to the appropriate article.
*There is a second meaning of interpretation section stuck for no good reason at the bottom.
Dmcq (talk) 10:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I see now That there are Forths that do optimised compiles rather than just producing threaded code, why anyone would want to do that for a write only like that I don't know. It is not though a good example of compiling for the article I believe. Dmcq (talk) 10:05, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs a lot of fixing 

message: At present this article does a rather inadequate job of inline citation (see other users above me). It also has other issues with citation in a more practical sense. Even when a source is included at times it is included without contextual information and so the information presented is less then useful. A very important example of this occurs when the article gets to the LISP section and mentions "McCarthy". The first time the name is reference it is done without any context who McCarthy is or why one should care what he has to say. I could add "Donges" says to various articles and the rightful response would be "Who is Donges? Why do I care what he has to say. Now it may be that McCarthy is a well known expert in some field. That material still needs to be there to suddenly start referencing him as this is an Encylopedia article not a 1specialty manual. By way of a parallel example, I would not include a statement in an article about the C program attributed to Ritchie without at least at first indication of whom he was. To read at present an individual without computer background reading the article may think that McCarthy refers to former U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and honestly I do not really care what suprises Senator McCarthy about LISP.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.237.41.200 (talk) 07:31, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation and Non Sequitir 

message: Although I prodded Self-interpreter as OR, Loadmaster suggests merging it here (which IMO is an acceptable alternate to deletion). Thoughts? All the best, Miniapolis 00:23, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: In notes and references, the 7th reference, "Terence Parr, Johannes Luber, The Difference Between Compilers and Interpreters" no longer works. It results 404 error.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.72.217.31 (talk) 13:24, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead link in one of the reference 

message: The first sentence makes it sound as if the CPU is executing instructions that haven't been compiled into machine language, and that's impossible. The CPU is only executing the interpreter. The interpreter process, running in the CPU, reads and maps the code to compiled routines within the interpreter, thus calling/executing machine code. The script or code here acts like data, and just triggers the execution of compiled code.
@ 2A00:23C4:B49E:CB01:605C:7BC9:D409:E883 (talk) 17:34, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not satisfied with first sentence 

message: — Assignment last updated by Kamrynley (talk) 17:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Linguistics in the Digital Age