I have no idea why this is getting re-posted in such short order:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34330966" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34330966</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34336223" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34336223</a><p>Anyhoo here are two related discussions:<p>* <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/108gsh4/compiled_and_interpreted_languages_two_ways_of/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/108gs...</a><p>* <a href="https://lobste.rs/s/evkxyk/compiled_interpreted_languages_two_ways" rel="nofollow">https://lobste.rs/s/evkxyk/compiled_interpreted_languages_tw...</a><p>Personally, I think there is and should be such a distinction, but it looks to me as though it was rather an intentional rather than an extensional one, like you can't tell when adding grain of sand adds up enough to call it a 'heap', or you can perfectly sit on a couch table and put your coffee cup on the bar stool. The latter turns the place-things-on-me thing into a piece of sitting furniture, and the sitting furniture acts as a table.<p>Once upon a time I was challenged to write some smallish piece of software in Java and I immediately got annoyed by that extra compilation step. I 'solved' that by putting compilation and execution into a single command line incantation.<p>Sure, if you look at it that way, there 'are no heaps', 'no chairs no tables', 'no compilation no interpretation just computation' but when you come back from the trip, a hammer's still a hammer and a screw won't nail it.