Introduction

Python is an interpreted language. Interpreted languages use middleware to read the source code and generate system-specific machine language. Compiled languages use a compiler to convert the source code directly into machine language; there is no middle step in the process.

The benefit of compiled languages is that, without the interpretation step, the code is executed directly by the system and yields the fastest processing time available. In addition, compilers have the ability to look at the source code as it is being converted and apply optimizations to make the machine code that much faster.

For example, if the compiler is analyzing the source code and sees that code spends a large amount of time in a particular loop, it can apply one of several optimization algorithms to the code to improve performance, such as breaking a single loop into multiple loops that each process a smaller part of the original loop's body.

Conversely, interpreted languages make the life of a programmer...