Why do we call python a scripting language?

[Robin Becker]

In article <37c94f3a.2285568 at news.netset.com>, guy_oliver at yahoo.com
writes
>On Sun, 29 Aug 1999 11:03:12 +0100, Robin Becker
><robin at jessikat.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>>What the hell are you writing that makes the language 'real' to you? Drivers??
>
>>don't be too amazed; the thing that usually makes these languages
>>useless is speed. I couldn't write any large scale linear algebra in
>>python, perl or java for that matter without using some pretty hefty
>>extensions. These are usually carefully crafted in C or Fortran.
>>
>>The SQL applications are also pretty powerfully assisted. ZOPE has lots
>>of pure C.
>>
>>It's not that it can't be done; it's not fast enough. 
>
>But even these applicaions can benefit from using python as a glue
>language.  I cant tell you the number of times I have been asked to
>write some program to translate the output of some fortran program
>into something that can be feed into the input of a different fortran
>program.  If these were wrapped in to modules in Python with a decent
>interface, they could be integrated with out even thinking about it.
>They certainly wouldnt have to pay me a days worth of programming to
>get the two things to work together.  and you'd still get the
>performance of using the native C/Fortran program.
>
...
lot's of interesting stuff.

I don't disagree with anything you've said.
>Thanks to everyone that responded so far!
>
>Guy
>
>
>
>

-- 
Robin Becker