I can name at least nine; assuming jrockway is more familiar with PHP than I am (very likely), 10 is reasonable or even understated.<p>1) The term "scripting language"; meaningless, and usually just used as an insult (as in this case) rather than with any reasonable definition.<p>2) Browsers don't execute PHP<p>3) Not all scripting languages are executed based on line order.<p>4) PHP doesn't require values to be declared before they're used.<p>5) Not all compiled languages are compiled to a separate file.<p>6) Most modern compiled languages compile to byte-code, which is not more "executable" than the original source.<p>7) Compilers <i>do</i> have to read the program from beginning to end. This might just be my ignorance, but I've never heard of a random-access parser.<p>8) Being compiled doesn't necessarily make execution any faster.<p>9) The compiled file still has to be read entirely, before it can be executed. Depending on code size, sections of it may be read repeatedly.