Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On 2024-03-29, Muttley@dastardlyhq.com <Muttley@dastardlyhq.com> wrote:

On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 11:40:03 +0000
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Muttley@dastardlyhq.com writes:

My rule of thimb is that a scripting language is one whereby the source code
can be run immediately by the interpreter, eg perl, python, regardless of
what happens internally. A full fledged programming language is one that
requires a compile/debug/link step first with the compiler and runtime (if
required) being seperate. eg Java, C

>
C can be a scripting language by that rule:

>
No definition is perfect in this case, its all shades of grey.

Yes, a definition can be close to perfet here:

Scripting is an activity, a use case, not a language.

Scripting refers to executing commands which are so high level that they
are entire applications or functional blocks within an application.
Scripting automates applications or groups of applications.

A language can /support/ scripting (and other paradigms).

If a language only supports scripting well, and nothing else, then it's
a scripting language.  That's exactly the same as that a language can be
functional, or multi-paradigm with support for functional programming.

Scripting tend to have the attribute that they would never be used (and
possibly could not be used) to write the functional building blocks
which their commands execute. It's possible for an application to be
written in a language in which it is scripted, but then that's almost
certainly not a scripting language.

Yes, an aspect of scripting is that scripts are taken as-is, in the
representation in which they are written. Or at least, can be.  If there
is a compiling step, it is either optional, or hidden by the
implementation. The requirement for some ahead-of-time compilation
ritual to prepare the script for execution by translating it to a
different file in a different format is anti-scripting, in a sense.

The ordinary meaning of the word "script" refers to a dialog followed by
an actor, in the same form in which it was written.  The programming
word was almost certainly coined in reference to that.

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