What are the highest level languages that can be compiled to executables? When I say compiled to an executable I am not referring to bytecode, but native assembly code like in the C, C++ sense.
EDIT: One issue that I’m having is that clients have ssh access to my server in a limit access acount. They need to run some of my scripts but I don’t want them to see the source code. A Python script (or any other script) cannot be executed without read permission unlike a natively compiled program which only needs execution privileges.
My vote would be for Java + GCJ. More information about GCJ can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gcj
It can skip bytecode and compile directly to machine code.