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Scripting vs. Programming

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mouser:
well f0dder you might be technically correct that in 2007,
Also, compiled doesn't necessarily mean "machine code" - think java, dotNET, perl/parrot et cetera.
Scripting languages can be compiled rather than interpreted, and traditional compiled languages can be interpreted as well (though not very fun for something like C++).
--- End quote ---

but i think the general flavor of the concepts, and the historical background is that when you talk about compiled, you are really implying that a substantial amount of work and a dedicated step is taking place to convert the code to a very highly optimized (usually machine code or close) version.  modern languages are blurring that a bit, but thats the point.

now there have always been interpretted programming languages.  and today's autohotkey "scripting language" is more powerful that the original hardcore full on programming languages so things get a bit confusing.

but when you say a scripting language you usually mean an interpreted thing (or something that "feels" interpreted, ie instantly runnable) that can be written and tested and run with very little turn around. in general i think people talk about a "scripting language" solution to a problem as a kind of quick and dirty solution, in a language that is much more forgiving and tends to be aimed more torwards experimenting and instant feedback, and where runtime speed and memory usage is not critical, vs the idea of getting together a team for a month with UML diagrams to plan out the objects, classes, and data structures.

mouser:
another way to think about things like this:
if you tell a master coder, write me something quick that reads in a file and writes it out again with some text replacements.  good solution is open up your text editor or ide and write a quick and dirty perl or python script.  speed and memory not important.

now you tell the coder they have to design some code for a mission critical piece of hardware, that has to operate millions of database calls a minute, with very tight and exact memory limits, where everything is going to have to work perfectly together, and the coder is going to have to know where every cpu cycle is going, and be able to reduce memory usage to a minimum and account for every byte of ram.  Well now you are talking about a c/c++ task, and you'd be a fool to use a scripting language for that.  You simply don't have the fine grain level of control that you need.

Veign:
any simple definition is not valid since it can never match the past and the current situations.
-rkarman (January 20, 2007, 02:16 PM)
--- End quote ---

That is probably the only 100% accurate statement made in this thread as most are a percentage of an opinion.

Its just such a hard thing to define.

CodeTRUCKER:
Yep, clear as mud!

Renegade:
I'm a little bit late here, but I'll go out on a limb and say that even HTML/CSS is programming, though a radically different kind.

If you've done templates before, or worked with higher requirements for HTML display, then you'd probably agree that HTML/CSS is still "programming". It's not easy when you start trying to match correct display for Trident, Gecko, and other engines. Especially for CSS 2.

It might be more accurate to say "coding" instead of "programming", but either way, it's all just one big fuzzy ball of different kinds of code.

This reminds me of how all the C guys used to squint and look down on the VB guys. That has kind of changed now with languages like Python and others like it where they typing is much looser. There are certain advantages that you get there that aren't available in C without a massive amount of programming/coding.

e.g.


--- ---// Create a variable to hold an int
var myVar1;
myVar1 = 3
myVar1 = 3 + 8;

// Create a variable to hold a string
var myVar2 = "Hello!";
myVar2 = myVar2 + " My name is var!";

// The following block would throw an error because myVar1 has been cast as an int and myVar2 as a string:
var myVar3 = myVar1 + myVar2;

So at the end of the day, it seems to me that writing "code" is still some form of "programming". You're writing a set of instructions. That's about it.

Unless we want to start telling the Python guys that they're not "real programmers" because Python isn't strongly typed, etc... Doesn't seem very reasonable to me.

(OK - that was a huge jump in logic there, but I'm just a bit too lazy to go through it right now... )

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