Java(well, Sun's Hotspot) is most definitely compiled, but mostly by the JIT at runtime. The interpreter only runs for the the first warmup, usually 10,000 met

Java(well, Sun's Hotspot) is most definitely compiled, but mostly by the JIT at runtime. The interpreter only runs for the the first warmup, usually 10,000 method calls and the JIT kicks in and translates the method to machine code. The tricky part is it's not simple to control exactly how and when it does its job, although it usually works very well.