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Asked: 2026-05-11T13:41:14+00:00

In the chosen answer for this question about Blue Ruby , Chuck says: All

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In the chosen answer for this question about Blue Ruby, Chuck says:

All of the current Ruby implementations are compiled to bytecode. Contrary to SAP’s claims, as of Ruby 1.9, MRI itself includes a bytecode compiler, though the ability to save the compiled bytecode to disk disappeared somewhere in the process of merging the YARV virtual machine. JRuby is compiled into Java .class files. I don’t have a lot of details on MagLev, but it seems safe to say it will take that road as well.

I’m confused about this compilation/interpretation issue with respect to Ruby.

I learned that Ruby is an interpreted language and that’s why when I save changes to my Ruby files I don’t need to re-build the project.

But if all of the Ruby implementations now are compiled, is it still fair to say that Ruby is an interpreted language? Or am I misunderstanding something?

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  1. Yes, Ruby’s still an interpreted language, or more precisely, Matz’s Ruby Interpreter (MRI), which is what people usually talk about when they talk about Ruby, is still an interpreter. The compilation step is simply there to reduce the code to something that’s faster to execute than interpreting and reinterpreting the same code time after time.

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