Programming languages mostly occupy a 4-dimensional space at runtime. These axes are actually a bit more complicated than just a line:

* The first axis is static vs dynamic types. Java is mostly statically-typed (though casting remains common and generics have some awkward spots); Python is entirely dynamically-typed at runtime (external static type-checkers do not affect this).

* The second axis is AOT vs JIT. Java has two phases - a trivial AOT bytecode compilation, then an incredibly advanced non-cached runtime native JIT (as opposed to the shitty tracing JIT that dynamically-typed languages have to settle for); Python traditionally has an automatically-cached barely-AOT bytecode compiler but nothing else (it has been making steps toward runtime JIT stuff, but poor decisions elsewhere limit the effectiveness).

* The third axis is indirect vs inlined objects. Java and Python both force all objects to be indirect, though they differ in terms of primitives. Java has been trying to add support for value types for decades, but the implementation is badly designed; this is one place where C# is a clear winner. Java can sometimes inline stack-local objects though.

* The fourth axis is deterministic memory management vs garbage collection. Java and Python both have GC, though in practice Python is semi-deterministic, and the language has a somewhat easier way to make it more deterministic (`with`, though it is subject to unfixable race conditions)

I have collected a bunch more information about language implementation theory: https://gist.github.com/o11c/6b08643335388bbab0228db763f9921...