As pointed out in your paper, the use of terms compiled versus interpreted is a long-standing, high-level generalization of programming languages. There are languages like FORTRAN and C that essentially go out of their way to bind things early specifically so they can be efficiently converted into machine language - i.e., compiled. Other languages like LISP (or Scheme) and Python go out of their way to delay binding for flexibility - which confounds efficient compilation to an extent. [And, yes the language designers often had exactly those distinctions in mind in designing specific languages - particularly those on the compiled side.] I personally find the distinction useful and definitely not nonsensical. I would say ignoring the conventional terminology is as bad as literally embracing them. Just my 2 cents. <div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 6:50 AM, Shriram Krishnamurthi <<a href="mailto:sk@cs.brown.edu">sk@cs.brown.edu</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> Dear Mr. Williams, The phrase "interpreted", when applied to languages, is nonsensical. Think about it for a minute and it should be clear to you. The notion of programming language paradigms is also, in my opinion, largely nonsensical: <a href="http://www.cs.brown.edu/%7Esk/Publications/Papers/Published/sk-teach-pl-post-linnaean/" target="_blank">http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/sk-teach-pl-post-linnaean/</a> I'm sure you have the best of intentions, but I have no idea what it is you're actually trying to accomplish -- in particular, why are you trying to reconstruct information that is already abundantly available on the Web? Shriram _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: <a href="http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme" target="_blank">http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme</a> </blockquote></div>