Quote Originally Posted by eyeRmonkey
One more question on the topic (for now ): Are bytecode and machinecode the same thing?
Kind of. Both are binary-encoded instructions that can be rapidly parsed and executed. However, machine code refers to things that are primarily directly executed by some existing hardware, while bytecode refers to things that are primarily executed by some interpreter/JIT-compiler like the JavaVM, the .Net CLR and similar things. Bytecode thus is kind of platform-independent.