I beg you, please don't speak with such certainty about definitions which you're not certain of, particularly when you've already been corrected. Take the opportunity to learn something new. Dragonwriter is using exactly the definition that people who work in this area use.
My copy of the red dragon book defines a compiler as a program for translating from one language to another. A translator from source to bytecode clearly meets this definition. If you have a problem with that definition then you're on pretty shaky ground since you're essentially making the argument that you know more about this sort of thing than Aho, Lam, Sethi and Ullman.
The distinction between a compiler and an interpreter is most clearly illustrated by old school (pre-JIT) java, where javac is clearly a compiler which translates Java source to Java bytecode (language -> language) and the java executable itself which interprets bytecode.
That distinction still exists in most interpreted language implementations, though not all. Python being a good example. It has a compiler which translates source to bytecode and an interpreter which executes the bytecode. They just both exist in the same program but crucially it certainly includes a compiler.
It was that there needs to be a distinct target language.
Encoding the source language in a more compact form without meaningfully changing it beyond superficially isn't compilation.
Like a web server that compresses JavaScript isn't a compiler.
My point was anything that outputs something that has to be interpreted is on sketchy grounds: if you are interpreting it how is that a distinct language from the original.
CPython can interpret py files or compile them into pyc.
CPython does not interpret the resulting bytecode. It executed on its virtual machine that bytecode.
Similarly Java and .NET languages are compiled into a bytecode which is executed on a virtual machine.
You don't interpret a compiled output.
The confusion comes from languages which support both like Python. We call Python interpreted as a shorthand for "can be interpreted" but modern Python often is compiled for the enormous performance benefits.
To reiterate you don't interpret bytecode you translate or execute it on a virtual machine.
No, I haven’t. Compilation is well-defined (unlike, really, "scripting language", though there are clearly languages that are frequently called that despite the absence of any coherent definition bounding the class), and its unquestionable that many implementations of languages usually called "scripting languages" use it.
> and are wondering why there is uncertainty…
No, I’m not “wondering” anything, and “uncertainty” isn’t even part of the discussion.
