Runtime Vs. Compile Time

The difference between compile time and run time is an example of what pointy-headed theorists call the phase distinction. It is one of the hardest concepts to learn, especially for people without much background in programming languages. To approach this problem, I find it helpful to ask

1. What invariants does the program satisfy?
2. What can go wrong in this phase?
3. If the phase succeeds, what are the postconditions (what do we know)?
4. What are the inputs and outputs, if any?

Compile time

1. The program need not satisfy any invariants. In fact, it needn't be a well-formed program at all. You could feed this HTML to the compiler and watch it barf...
2. What can go wrong at compile time:
   • Syntax errors
   • Typechecking errors
   • (Rarely) compiler crashes
3. If the compiler succeeds, what do we know?
   • The program was well formed---a meaningful program in whatever language.
   • It's possible to start running the program. (The program might fail immediately, but at least we can try.)
4. What are the inputs and outputs?
   • Input was the program being compiled, plus any header files, interfaces, libraries, or other voodoo that it needed to import in order to get compiled.
   • Output is hopefully assembly code or relocatable object code or even an executable program. Or if something goes wrong, output is a bunch of error messages.