What are the technical reasons why languages like Python and Ruby are interpreted (out of the box) instead of compiled? It seems to me like it should not be too hard for people knowledgeable in this domain to make these languages not be interpreted like they are today, and we would see significant performance gains. So certainly I am missing something.
Well, isn't one of the strengths of these languages that they are so easily scriptable? They wouldn't be if they were compiled. And on the other hand, dynamic languages are easier to intereprete than to compile.
Why is (python|ruby) interpreted?