Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Mike_12345 1198 days ago
That is definitely a compiler and anyone with a CS degree would call it that if they were discussing its functionality, because that's technically what it is. (Referring specifically to the part which compiles Python to bytecode)

Your SQL database also has a compiler. SQL is compiled to an execution plan. Compile doesn't only mean "create a machine code executable file".

1 comments

> That is definitely a compiler and anyone with a CS degree would call it that if they were discussing its functionality because that's technically what it is.

None of these assertions is correct.

> (Referring specifically to the part which compiles Python to bytecode)

So referring specifically to something different than what I explicitly specified, it's called something else.

By that reasoning, a cow is a muscle and you are an acid.

> Your SQL database also has a compiler.

"Has a" and "is a" are rather different relationships.

> Compile doesn't only mean "create a machine code executable file".

You're the only person who made that assertion.

> None of these assertions is correct.

You should fix the Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPython

"CPython can be defined as both an interpreter and a compiler as it compiles Python code into bytecode before interpreting it."