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"but a compiler does not by definition have to compile your code before deployment" Huh?

Not sure many experienced developers would agree with you a JIT Compiler is quite different to a real compiled language C Fortran Etc

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a compiled language, yes. But the function of a compiler, between a compiled language and an interpreted language, remains the same. It translates code from one representation to another.

This is really simple. Do you use V8 to compile your code or to run it?

Just because V8 has a compiler, doesn't make it a compiler. Do you see the difference?

V8 compiles code into bytecode and runs that. This is really simple.

V8 is a JIT compiler. It both compiles code and runs it. For your original complaint about not being able to compile JS up front, you're talking about Ahead-Of-Time (AOT) compilation. You don't seem very familiar with the relevant terminology.

In fact, I just looked it up and apparently V8 compiles JS directly to machine code rather than bytecode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_V8.

V8 compiles to native code with the exception of low memory devices (512M or less), for which it has a (relatively recently introduced) bytecode compiler, so it uses an interpreter in that one case.

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