[Discuss] Interpreters vs Compilers

[Andrew Resch]

On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 10:26 -0700, John Blomfield wrote:
> My presentation "Writing programs for Linux" at last night's monthly 
> meeting gave rise to some spirited discussion, when I remarked that 
> compiled languages resulted in faster execution times than interpreted 
> languages and tended to be preferred by programmers for larger more 
> complex problems.  There were many reasons put forward as to why this 
> should be and some doubted there was any significant difference in 
> practice.  I was unable to answer these questions authoritatively since 
> I just use a language when it suits my particular purpose and use the 
> rule of thumb "big or fast program = C or C++" and "small and quick to 
> write = Python, bash etc."

For a "big and fast" program, I believe that a marriage of compiled and
interpreted languages may be the best solution.  You gain the rapid
development bonuses of a higher level interpreted language with the
speed of a compiled one.  We do this quite successfully with Deluge,
utilizing Python for the "glue" that binds the compiled libraries, such
as GTK and libtorrent.  I doubt you would find much of a difference in
speed if it were written purely in C or C++.

Cheers,
Andrew