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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Interpreters (Re: Comparing productivity: LisP against C++ (was Re: Reference Counting))
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References: <MATT.95Jan21135219@physics7.berkeley.edu> <Pine.A32.3.91.950123091918.27277F-100000@swim5.eng.sematech.org> <1995Jan24.160125.6073@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 17:28:02 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.c++:109256 comp.lang.lisp:16495

In article <1995Jan24.160125.6073@midway.uchicago.edu> Charles Fiterman <cef@geodesic.com> writes:
>
>There is a strong advantage to not having an intrepeter and a compiler.
>Suppose one or the other has a bug. You really want to intrepret all
>code or compile all code.

It's an advantage, but I'm not sure how strong it is.  The situation
is not all that different from one in which you might use more than
one implementation or (even) different optimization / debug settings
when compiling (the -O and -g of many C compilers, for example).  What
if there's a bug in one case or the other?  It's something people have
been able to deal with, and an interpreter can make it easier to find
certain bugs.

-- jd
