Why do we call python a scripting language?

[Timothy Dixon]

On Fri, 27 Aug 1999 10:18:55 GMT, guy_oliver at yahoo.com wrote:

>Why do we call python a scripting language?  
>
>For me, and for most of the people I try to tell about the benefits of
>python, the title 'scripting language' implies that its not a real
>language capable of real programs.  It implies to most of them that it
>is good for simple sysadmin and maybe short cgi scripts.

I put it in the class of scripting languages because it's embeddable
(as I understand it; I'm actually just a newbie) in other applications
where it can be used for scripting another app.

It's not *just* in that class, of course; polymorphism and multiple
inheritance are great real-world characteristics. :-)