> The same goes for JavaScript today. Given that all of the usable implementations are interpreters, JavaScript can currently be considered an interpreted language.
This hasn't been true for quite some time. SpiderMonkey and JavaScriptCore do include interpreters, but only use them while code is first running. If a function gets hot, they then JIT compile the code. V8 has no interpreter at all, only JIT compilers (and is certainly usable and in wide use). And finally SpiderMonkey even just added an AOT compiler for compliant asm.js code (which, while a subset, is indeed valid JS code).
This hasn't been true for quite some time. SpiderMonkey and JavaScriptCore do include interpreters, but only use them while code is first running. If a function gets hot, they then JIT compile the code. V8 has no interpreter at all, only JIT compilers (and is certainly usable and in wide use). And finally SpiderMonkey even just added an AOT compiler for compliant asm.js code (which, while a subset, is indeed valid JS code).