Yes, and the .beam files are interpreted (i.e. they are not native code). There is a native-code compiler (HiPE). I'm not sure how "much" it compiles the code

Yes, and the .beam files are interpreted (i.e. they are not native code). There is a native-code compiler (HiPE). I'm not sure how "much" it compiles the code (e.g. whether type-dispatch code remains or not).