What is The Difference Between Q And Smalltalk, Programming Languages

Q is an Interpreted Programming Language, while Smalltalk is a Compiled Programming Language

What are Interpreted Programming Languages

An interpreted language is a programming language for which most of its implementations execute instructions directly, without previously compiling a program into machine-language instructions. The interpreter executes the program directly, translating each statement into a sequence of one or more subroutines already compiled into machine code. (Wikipedia)

What are Compiled Programming Languages

A compiled language is a programming language whose implementations are typically compilers (translators that generate machine code from source code), and not interpreters (step-by-step executors of source code, where no pre-runtime translation takes place). (Wikipedia)

While Q is an Interpreted Programming Language, and Smalltalk is a Compiled Programming Language

Let us now look at the difference between the two:

What is Q Programming Language – A brief synopsis

It is called Q for being an equational programming language. It is an interpreted functional language that was designed by Albert Graf at the University of Mainz in Germany. It can be described as a set of equations used to evaluate expressions.

What is Smalltalk Programming Language – A brief synopsis

It is a reflective, object-oriented programming language that supports dynamic typing. Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, Dan Ingalls, Scott Wallace, Ted Kaehler and their associates at Xerox PARC developed Smalltalk. They designed it for educational use and it soon became popular. VisualWorks is a prominent implementation of Smalltalk. Squeak is a programming language that is in the form of an implementation of Smalltalk. Scratch is a visual programming language based on Squeak.