Advantage of intermediate representations after compilation

Question

Whats the point of having an intermediate representation after compilation (for eg Java has bytecode) if you still have to design a separate software (JVM in this case) for every platform ? I mean platform dependency is still there!!

Answer 1

Whats the point of having an intermediate representation after compilation (for eg Java has bytecode) if you still have to design a separate software (JVM in this case) for every platform ?

Because you don't have to re-write and re-compile it on all/different platforms. This is the beauty of java Write once run anywhere feature.

Being a developer I need not to worry which OS platform my code will run. I simply need to compile and provide the classes, which will be valid for all the platforms for the same java version.

Answer 2

So that you don't need to write the code for every platform.

Answer 3

Write once - Use anywhere

that's a principal of java Bytecode