Python is the best and most popular general purpose scripting language; the universal scripting language

[Paul Prescod]

Jonathan Daugherty wrote:

> # So which is Lisp? Prolog? Smalltalk? ML?
> 
> I didn't claim that it necessarily holds for every language. :)

But you didn't really answer the question. Is Lisp a scripting language 
or not? If not, why?

> # A scripting language is a language that makes scripting (gluing together 
> # components) easy.
> 
> You're defining it in terms of itself; what is scripting?  The use of
> scripting languages, or the accomplishment of tasks quickly and
> easily?  Some would argue the latter can be done with programming
> languages.

Scripting is the gluing together of components potentially written in a 
variety of languages.

> # A programming language is a language that makes programming (including 
> # the creation of components) easy.
> 
> By this metric many languages are both, since the definition is
> subjective.

Yes. The term is both historical and subjective. If you try to draw any 
line in the sand you will find outliers like Lisp and even Java (which 
is bytecode interpreted just as Python is) will cause you problems. 
There are compilers for Python and interpreters for C.

  Paul Prescod