Re: Whither scripting? Will scripting wither?

It seems like you consider Java not to be a scripting language. I don't understand why. As far as i can tell java meets all the requirements of a scripting language.

And it seems to me that there is no case at all to say that scripting is going to go away, ever. The fact is that scripting languages solve a whole bunch of problems of traditional software development and because of this they will never go away.

What criteria do i use to say something is a scripting language? The following:

Does not compile to native machine code but instead runs on a virtual machine of some sort.
Does not require (one might even say does not allow) the user to manage memory.

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$world=~s/war/peace/g

Comment on Re: Whither scripting? Will scripting wither?

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Re^2: Whither scripting? Will scripting wither? by jdporter (Paladin) on Feb 01, 2006 at 18:34 UTC
I don't understand why. I understand why. Because it's verbose. Very verbose. If nothing else, this alone keeps it from being seen as a "scripting" language by nearly everybody. If you think, "This task is so simple it shouldn't take me more than 5 minutes to write a script to do it", you're not going to reach for Java. (Of course, there's always the hammer/nail syndrome; but those whose only hammer is Java probably don't believe in "scripting" anyway.) Does not compile to native machine code but instead runs on a virtual machine of some sort. I don't think so. There's little to stop Java or Perl compilers from targeting real machines; and a Java or Perl "real machine" could be constructed. In the real world :-), compilers for C targeting virtual machines have been around a long time. So this really can't be a discriminator. Essentially, whether a language is a "scripting" language or not is really in the mind of the programmer. It's about ease of use; about how quickly one can go from problem to algorithm to solution. Whether the machine running that solution is real or virtual rarely if ever enters into that thought process. perlfaq1: Is it a Perl program or a Perl script? Most of the above is a regurgitation of a discussion that occurred in the chatterbox. We're building the house of the future together.	[reply]
Re^2: Whither scripting? Will scripting wither? by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Feb 01, 2006 at 18:59 UTC
See also John Ousterhout's comparison of scripting vs. system programming languages. It's somewhat misguided in calling Perl a scripting language and saying Scripting languages aren't intended for writing applications from scratch; they are intended primarily for plugging together components. In my mind, to be a script, The source code must be ready-to-run. That is, you hand your source file directly to the interpreter and your program is running. Any language could meet this criterion with an "interpreter" that did the compile and run, but C and Java typically don't meet it. The language cannot require blocks. A script should be able to run top to bottom without any further structure than lines. I had thought there would be more requirements, but I think that's it. You can expect that a scripting language will have some form of `eval`, but that isn't a defining characteristic. I also like this brief explanation of the difference. Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Whither scripting? Will scripting wither? by samizdat (Vicar) on Feb 01, 2006 at 18:03 UTC
good point, demerphq. Perhaps 'scripting' is not the appropriate delimiter. Let's try 'lightweight'? Let me make one thing perfectly clear (jowls wobble a la RMN!), I'm all for scripting / lightweight web development in 95% of all cases. Don Wilde "There's more than one level to any answer."	[reply]