---
title: Interpreters
---

## Interpreters

Interpreters are a kind of translator. Interpreters take source code - code written in JavaScript, Python, and other languages. Then they translate it into code the computer understands.

This translated code is binary code. It is nothing but 1s and 0s. Interpreters translate the source code line-by-line, while running the binary code. The program will run until the interpreter finds errors in the source code. Then it will stop translating/running the program and flag the errors.

To compare, compilers convert all the source code at once to binary code, then run the binary code.

#### More Information:
[Matt Adesanya's "A Gentler Introduction to Programming"](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-gentler-introduction-to-programming-707453a79ee8) compares compilers and interpreters, and introduces other basic programming concepts.

Some Interpreted Languages:
* [Python](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language))
* [JavaScript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript)
* [Ruby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language))
* [Forth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language))
* [Perl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl)