Novel Thoughts on Scripting and Languages

[Martin Christensen]

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>>>>> "Terry" == Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> writes:
Terry> I think it's "scripting" if it relies heavily on external
Terry> applications, which you call more or less directly.

I once saw a pragmatic definition to the effect that it's scripting if
it's practical to write a one-liner (or equivalent) that'll solve a
useful ad hoc problem.

The way most people use the word 'script' seems to indicate that it
should be a small program that solves a small problem (not to say that
it's of little value). Contrast this to 'application', which indicates
larger size.

It tends to be more difficult to define what a 'scripting language'
is, and I'm not even sure how much sense that term makes, even though
I occasionally use the word myself. In my experience, when people talk
about scripting languages they are thinking of one or both of two
properties of such languages: 1) that they make writing scripts easy
than other languages and 2) that they make writing large applications
more difficult than in other languages.

These are purely pragmatic 'definitions'. I'm not pretending that
they're even very clever or useful.

Martin

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