ARCHIVED: What is byte code?

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Byte code is intermediate to machine language and human-readable source code. It is similar to architecture-specific code because it is prepared with a compiler, except that its instructions are not native to any particular chipset. Rather, byte code is designed to be processed by an interpreter, virtual machine, or a just-in-time compiler that performs the actual machine language instructions. Like source code, byte code is portable to any computer that has an environment for running it. However, it is more compact and, often, quicker to execute. The price for platform independence is that byte code programs typically run more slowly than native programs, even with a just-in-time compiler.

Environments that can run byte code programs include Emacs, Java, Visual Basic, and Smalltalk.