I think its helpful to define concepts like interpretation and compilation. Interpreters take a program and produce a value. Compilation takes a program and ret

I think its helpful to define concepts like interpretation and compilation. Interpreters take a program and produce a value. Compilation takes a program and returns another program that hopefully when interpreted gives the same value. In some sense, python and ruby compile into bytecode, and then the bytecode is executed using an interpreter. There are also concepts such as partial evaluation (where you do a little interpreting while you compile) and JITing (where you do a little compiling while you interpret) which also seem to mix compilation and interpretation, but can be clearly specified as a particular combination of them.