Which languages are dynamically typed and compiled (and which are statically typed and interpreted)?

Question

In my reading on dynamic and static typing, I keep coming up against the assumption that statically typed languages are compiled, while dynamically typed languages are interpreted. I know that in general this is true, but I'm interested in the exceptions.

I'd really like someone to not only give some examples of these exceptions, but try to explain why it was decided that these languages should work in this way.

Victimize

With many different implementations for the same language, this distinction of language being compiled or interpreted is meaningless. For eg, even the major dynamic languages like groovy, python, lisp, javascript, ruby, lua (which Norman mentions) all have "compiled" implementations. Even worse, the definition of "compiled" and "interpreted" itself is little vague - I guess you can call statically typed java and jvm variants interpreted. – Micromillimeter

Answer 1

Here's a list of a few interesting systems. It is not exhaustive!

Dynamically typed and compiled

1. The Gambit Scheme compiler, Chez Scheme, Will Clinger's Larceny Scheme compiler, the Bigloo Scheme compiler, and probably many others.

   Why?

   Lots of people really like Scheme. Programs as data, good macro system, 35 years of development, big community. But they want performance. Hence, a number of good native-code compilers—Chez Scheme is even a successful commercial product (interpreted bytecodes are free; native codes you pay for).

2. The LuaJIT just-in-time compiler for Lua.

   Why?

   To show it could be done. And then, people started to like getting 3x speedup on their Lua programs. Lua is in a lot of games, where performance matters, plus it's creeping into other products too. 70% of the code in Adobe Lightroom is Lua.

3. The iconc Icon-to-C compiler.

   Why?

   The fifty people who used it loved Icon. Totally unusual evaluation model, the most innovative (and in my opinion, best) string-processing system ever designed. But that evaluation model was really expensive, especially on late-1980s computers. By compiling Icon to C, the Icon Project made it possible for big Icon programs to run in fewer hours.

Conclusion: people first develop an attachment to a dynamically typed language, and probably a significant code base. Eventually, the community spits out a native-code compiler so that you can get better performance and solve bigger problems.

Statically Typed and Interpreted

This category is less common, but...

1. Objective Caml. Dialect of ML, vehicle for lots of innovative experiments in language design.

   Why?

   Very portable system and very fast compilation times. People like both properties, so the new language-design ideas are desseminated widely.

2. Moscow ML. Standard ML with a few extra features of the modules system.

   Why?

   Portable, fast compilation times, easy to make an interactive read/eval/print loop. Became a popular teaching compiler.

3. C-Terp. An old product, I think maybe from Gimpel Software. Saber C—a product I don't think you can buy any more.

   Why?

   Debugging. Especially, debugging on 1980s hardware under MS-DOS. For very little resources, you could get really good help debugging C code on very limited hardware (think: 4.77MHz processor with an 8-bit bus, 640K of RAM fully loaded). Nearly impossible to get a good visual debugger for native-compiled code, but with the interpreter, fairly easy.

4. UCSD Pascal—the system that made "P-code" a household word.

   Why?

   Teachers liked Niklaus Wirth's language design, and the compiler could run on very small machines. Wirth's clean design and the UCSD P-system made an unbeatable combination, and Pascal was the standard teaching language of the 1970s. Younger people may find it hard to appreciate that in the 1970s there was no debate over what language to teach in the first course. Today I know of programs using C, C++, Haskell, Java, ML, and Scheme. In the 1970s it was always Pascal, and the UCSD P-system was a big reason way.

   In case you are wondering, P stood for portable.

Summary: Interpreting a statically typed language is a great way to get an implementation into everybody's hands quickly. (It also had advantages for debugging on Bronze Age hardware.)

Kendalkendall

Answer 2

Java (a statically typed language) is compiled to JVM bytecode, which was interpreted on older versions of the JVM, whereas it now uses Just In Time (JIT) compilation, meaning machine code is generated at runtime. I also believe ML and its dialects can be interpreted, and ML is definitely statically typed.

Cyler

As far as I know, Java has always been compiled to bytecode prior to execution. (The bytecode used to be interpreted by an interpreter, but is now commonly compiled into machine code by a JIT.) – Fleisig

Answer 3

Objective-C is compiled and supports dynamic typing (certainly when calling methods via [target doSomething] syntax). That is, you can send any message to a target (using ordinary language syntax, without programming against a reflection API), receive only a warning at compile time that it might not be handled, and receive an exception only at runtime if the target doesn't respond to that selector (which is like a method signature); and you can ask any object (which can all be of static type id if your code doesn't know any better or doesn't care) whether it respondsToSelector: to probe its capabilities.

Tamworth

Just for note. Actually Objective-C classes are fully dynamically typed by default in most cases. – Lapidary

Answer 4

Python is a dynamic language that has compilers.

See this SO question - Python - why compile?, for instance.

In general, compiling makes the program run much faster.

Corner

but still runs in an interpreter, as it is not compiled to machine language but to a special byte code that can only be run by a python virtual machine (a.k.a. interpreter) – Depreciation

As do Java, C# and the other .NET languages. They are all still considered to be compiled, even if it is to bytecode. – Corner

That's interesting. I guess bytecode blurs the distinction between compiling and interpreting. – Victimize

Any language can be compiled into any form between "whitespace removed" and "machine code", type systems don't have anything to do with it. – Qoph

.NET bytecode isn't interpreted, it is compiled further into native machine code (is NetMF an exception to this?). Java isn't a .NET language. – Poundal

Answer 5

Actionscript has dynamic typing and compiles to bytecode.

And it even compiles right down to native machine code if you want to release a Flash app on the iPhone.

Immersionism