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Originally posted by nwegner:
**Interpreting: like a political leader making a speach, and having an 'interpreter' translate it into another language while the leader is still talking. This is pretty slow/jerky because the code has to be interpreted while it's running, but it's easy to change or make stuff since you can write the app (or even have the app modify itself) and run it right away, without much of a delay. The other thing is that you need to also run the actual interpreter program, which has it's own associated pros and cons for both distributing and running your app.
Compiling: like having a writer in 1800's france write something, and then a french student in 2000's Canada translate it back into a seperate document. The actual translation of the code takes less time, since it's done all at once without having to run it, but it takes a while before you can do anything with it and so you have to wait between writing code and trying it out.
As for which is better, it depends on what you are doing. The actual size of a compiled app will probably be bigger than a script for an interpreter, but the interpreter is probably larger still. The compiled program will probably run faster, but the time it takes to run might be very small anyways, so the difference doesn't matter. The compiled program will almost certainly have more developer support as well (and not just from the compilor vendor), but you might not need, say, OpenGL or access to low-level OS functions (these even may be included somehow into an interpreter). In the end, you'd probably be best off with a compilor, but if your app would bennefit from an interpreter, you might as well use it.
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Actually Python interpreted is still faster than Basic compiled :p. But if you're worried about speed MacPython includes a make Applet file that compiles the program that you've written.
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Diddly,
"Well, we could grind
our enemies into powder, but gosh, we did that yesterday."