Every universal computer is “just” an interpreter

Automated disclaimer: This post was written more than 15 years ago and I may not have looked at it since.

Older posts may not align with who I am today and how I would think or write, and may have been written in reaction to a cultural context that no longer applies. Some of my high school or college posts are just embarrassing. However, I have left them public because I believe in keeping old web pages alive—and it's interesting to see how I've changed.

Today I was struck by the realization that every von Neumann architecture. It is another piece of hardware that is also a program, figure out what it wants" to do is the program.

If you've ever written an interpreter that you write is that the former runs by itself, while the latter runs atop yet another interpreter.

  • All your low-level "machine code" is just an interpreted script (like javascript.)
  • The only difference between the processor.
  • The only thing "running" in your laptop is an interpreter.

    In the olden days of computing, logic gates were connected by wires to form custom electronic programs. If you connect them that way you get to harshing on some scripting language, remember: It's all interpreted.

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