Many interpreted languages use an intermediate representation and/or JIT compilation internally, like for example Python with its .pyc files. And Java as a level-2 language only compiles to bytecode (class files) which by default is then interpreted, and typically only JIT-compiled for “hot” code. The distinction between levels 3 and 2 is more about how the application is distributed for execution, in source-code form vs. in some compiled binary form.
> Many interpreted languages use an intermediate representation and/or JIT compilation internally, like for example Python with its .pyc files.
Yes, but Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. are also all dynamically typed, which places them in level 4.
> And Java as a level-2 language only compiles to bytecode (class files) which by default is then interpreted, and typically only JIT-compiled for “hot” code.
Yes, but Java is generally only run in the JVM and is not often compiled ahead-of-time to a static executable. There are AOT compilers for Java, but the performance isn't great. Java was designed to run in a VM. Classloaders, static initializers, reflection, every-method-is-virtual all make it quite difficult to compile Java to a static executable and get decent performance.
