从http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-compiled-and-interpreted-programming-languages

There is no difference, because “compiled programming language” and “interpreted programming language” aren’t meaningful concepts. Any programming language, and I really mean any, can be interpreted or compiled. Thus, interpretation and compilation are implementation techniques, not attributes of languages. Interpretation is a technique whereby another program, the interpreter, performs operations on behalf of the program being interpreted in order to run it. If you can imagine reading a program and doing what it says to do step-by-step, say on a piece of scratch paper, that’s just what an interpreter does as well. A common reason to interpret a program is that interpreters are relatively easy to write. Another reason is that an interpreter can monitor what a program tries to do as it runs, to enforce a policy, say, for security. Compilation is a technique whereby a program written in one language (the “source language”) is translated into a program in another language (the “object language”), which hopefully means the same thing as the original program. While doing the translation, it is common for the compiler to also try to transform the program in ways that will make the object program faster (without changing its meaning!). A common reason to compile a program is that there’s some good way to run programs in the object language quickly and without the overhead of interpreting the source language along the way. You may have guessed, based on the above definitions, that these two implementation techniques are not mutually exclusive, and may even be complementary. Traditionally, the object language of a compiler was machine code or something similar, which refers to any number of programming languages understood by particular computer CPUs. The machine code would then run “on the metal” (though one might see, if one looks closely enough, that the “metal” works a lot like an interpreter). Today, however, it’s very common to use a compiler to generate object code that is meant to be interpreted—for example, this is how Java used to (and sometimes still does) work. There are compilers that translate other languages to JavaScript, which is then often run in a web browser, which might interpret the JavaScript, or compile it a virtual machine or native code. We also have interpreters for machine code, which can be used to emulate one kind of hardware on another. Or, one might use a compiler to generate object code that is then the source code for another compiler, which might even compile code in memory just in time for it to run, which in turn . . . you get the idea. There are many ways to combine these concepts.

简短的(不精确的)定义:

编译语言:将整个程序立即转换为机器代码，然后由CPU运行机器代码。

解释语言:逐行读取程序，一旦读取一行，CPU就会执行该行的机器指令。

但实际上，现在很少有语言是纯编译或纯解释的，它们通常是混合的。想要更详细的图片描述，请看这个帖子:

编译和解释的区别是什么?

或者是我后来的博客:

https://orangejuiceliberationfront.com/the-difference-between-compiler-and-interpreter/

很难给出一个实际的答案，因为差异在于语言定义本身。可以为每一种编译语言构建一个解释器，但不可能为每一种解释语言构建一个编译器。它主要是关于语言的正式定义。所以在大学里没有人喜欢理论信息学。

解释源代码相对于编译源代码的最大优势是可移植性。

如果你的源代码是编译的，你需要为你的程序运行在不同类型的处理器和/或平台编译不同的可执行文件(例如一个用于Windows x86，一个用于Windows x64，一个用于Linux x64，等等)。此外，除非您的代码完全符合标准，并且不使用任何特定于平台的函数/库，否则您实际上需要编写和维护多个代码库!

如果你的源代码是解释型的，你只需要编写一次，它就可以在任何平台上由合适的解释器解释和执行!它是便携!请注意，解释器本身是为特定平台编写和编译的可执行程序。

编译代码的一个优点是它向最终用户隐藏了源代码(可能是知识产权)，因为您部署的不是人类可读的原始源代码，而是一个模糊的二进制可执行文件。

从http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-compiled-and-interpreted-programming-languages

There is no difference, because “compiled programming language” and “interpreted programming language” aren’t meaningful concepts. Any programming language, and I really mean any, can be interpreted or compiled. Thus, interpretation and compilation are implementation techniques, not attributes of languages. Interpretation is a technique whereby another program, the interpreter, performs operations on behalf of the program being interpreted in order to run it. If you can imagine reading a program and doing what it says to do step-by-step, say on a piece of scratch paper, that’s just what an interpreter does as well. A common reason to interpret a program is that interpreters are relatively easy to write. Another reason is that an interpreter can monitor what a program tries to do as it runs, to enforce a policy, say, for security. Compilation is a technique whereby a program written in one language (the “source language”) is translated into a program in another language (the “object language”), which hopefully means the same thing as the original program. While doing the translation, it is common for the compiler to also try to transform the program in ways that will make the object program faster (without changing its meaning!). A common reason to compile a program is that there’s some good way to run programs in the object language quickly and without the overhead of interpreting the source language along the way. You may have guessed, based on the above definitions, that these two implementation techniques are not mutually exclusive, and may even be complementary. Traditionally, the object language of a compiler was machine code or something similar, which refers to any number of programming languages understood by particular computer CPUs. The machine code would then run “on the metal” (though one might see, if one looks closely enough, that the “metal” works a lot like an interpreter). Today, however, it’s very common to use a compiler to generate object code that is meant to be interpreted—for example, this is how Java used to (and sometimes still does) work. There are compilers that translate other languages to JavaScript, which is then often run in a web browser, which might interpret the JavaScript, or compile it a virtual machine or native code. We also have interpreters for machine code, which can be used to emulate one kind of hardware on another. Or, one might use a compiler to generate object code that is then the source code for another compiler, which might even compile code in memory just in time for it to run, which in turn . . . you get the idea. There are many ways to combine these concepts.

编译语言是这样一种语言:程序一旦编译，就用目标机器的指令来表达。例如，源代码中的加法“+”操作可以直接转换为机器代码中的“ADD”指令。

解释型语言是指指令不直接由目标机器执行，而是由其他程序(通常用本机语言编写)读取和执行的语言。例如，相同的“+”操作将在运行时被解释器识别，然后调用它自己的“add(a,b)”函数，并使用适当的参数，然后执行机器代码“add”指令。

你可以在编译语言中做你在解释语言中可以做的任何事情，反之亦然——它们都是图灵完备的。然而，这两种方法在实施和使用方面都有优点和缺点。

我将完全概括(纯粹主义者原谅我!)，但大致来说，以下是编译语言的优点:

通过直接使用目标计算机的本机代码获得更快的性能 有机会在编译阶段应用相当强大的优化

下面是解释型语言的优点:

更容易实现(编写好的编译器非常困难!!) 不需要运行编译阶段:可以直接“动态”执行代码 是否可以更方便地使用动态语言

注意，字节码编译等现代技术增加了一些额外的复杂性——这里发生的情况是，编译器的目标是一个与底层硬件不同的“虚拟机”。这些虚拟机指令可以在稍后阶段再次编译，以获得本机代码(例如，由Java JVM JIT编译器完成)。