Interpreted programming languages are those that historically, and/or usually, use interpreters to interpret source code line by line, as they run, and output object (machine) code, often interactively, in a simple edit-debug cycle. This makes programming faster and more productive, but usually produces slower running programs. Almost all interpreted languages are garbage collected, use GC.

Dynamic, and JIT (Just In Time) compilers are synonyms. They act much like interpreters, but compile (not interpret) source code as they run. They can turn interpreted languages into compiled ones, and can be written for any language.

But the basic difference persists: while executing, at runtime, interpreted languages and dynamic compilers, make more decisions, do more computing, than compiled languages.

On this page, languages are arranged in three groups and levels: 1) Top group: types or classes of languages. 2) Middle group: languages for which there are more than one instance of a language of this name/type, a language family. 3) Bottom group: specific languages which have their own directory category.