What are compiled or Interpreted Languages mean?

In our previous discussion, I mentioned that we write code in some mid or higher level languages but those languages need to be converted to machines language so computer can understand.

This conversion nature varies from language to language.

So here comes compiled and interpreted language.

In compiled language, the whole source code that we write in some higher level language is first converted to machine code before it can be executed by the machine.

For example, C is a compiled language. So if we write a program in C then there is a C compiler which convert our written code to machine language. And as I said machine codes are specific to particular hardware model or type.

Another example,

Python or Java is an interpreted language which means we write code in Python or Java language syntax but then there is a special kind of software for Python or Java which actually run the code one by one instruction and execute in a particular machine.

Interpreted languages are little slow by nature than the compiled languages.

because compiled languages are converted to machine codes once and is runnable by machine.

But interpreted languages are not fully converted to machine codes. Instead they are converted to some intermediate format which are then interpreted by the special software in the system.

The advantage of interpreted language over the compiled languages is that they are platform independent. As the code is executed or interpreted by the special software we just need to install that special software in the system. That special software is called interpreter.

So in interpreted languages, once we write code we can run that same code without re-writing but for compiled languages we have to build and compile the whole code to run it in different machines.

On the other hand, compiled languages are faster than interpreted languages.