Historically, compiling programs could take a long time. Interpreted languages did not need to be compiled. So if developers wanted to change the program, if it was interpreted they could just tweak a few lines and run the program. If it was compiled, they had to wait until the compiler was done. This slowed down development.

Nowadays compilers are much faster, but even now compiling can take a long time if XKCD is to be believed.

Another advantage is platform-independence, although it comes at a price. The program isn't compiled for a specific architecture, so anyone who has an interpreter for the language can run it. Of course the key phrase is "anyone who has an interpreter for the language", so ironically this platform-independence comes at the price of less portability.

Interpreted languages also tend to come with a REPL, a Read-Eval-Print-Loop. The user can just enter commands and have them executed directly. If the program maintains the values of variables after finishing, the developer can inspect the state after the program has finished.
Note that compiled languages can have REPL's too, but they require some more effort to implement. As the linked Wikipedia article points out: " REPL support for compiled languages is usually achieved by implementing an interpreter on top of a virtual machine which provides an interface to the compiler."

Sources:
Avo, Sethi, Ullman - Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
http://itinterviewguide.com/interpreted-language/
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/zosbasics/com.ibm.zos.zappldev/zappldev_85.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read–eval–print_loop

posted over 3 years ago

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3y ago

FractionalRadix‭

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