To clarify my comment, I did mean bytecode interpreter. This is a common implementation approach - parse the source to generate an AST, transform the AST to by

To clarify my comment, I did mean bytecode interpreter. This is a common implementation approach - parse the source to generate an AST, transform the AST to bytecode, then interpret the bytecode. It's still interpretation, and is slow. Contrast to JIT engines which transform the intermediate code (whether that's AST or bytecode) to machine code, and is fast.