Python vs. Lisp -- please explain

[Alexander Schmolck]

Bruno Desthuilliers <bdesth.quelquechose at free.quelquepart.fr> writes:

> Alexander Schmolck a écrit :
> > Bruno Desthuilliers <bdesth.quelquechose at free.quelquepart.fr> writes:
> >
> 
> >>DH a écrit :
> >>(snip)
> >>
> >>>It is by design. Python is dynamically typed. It is essentially an
> >>>interpreted scripting language like javascript or ruby or perl,
> >>
> >>
> >>It's not a "scripting" language, and it's not interpreted.
> > Of course it is. What do you think happens to the bytecode?
> 
> 
> Ok, then what do you think happens to 'machine' code ?

It gets interpreted (by a CPU, for example) -- your point being? If it is that
my definition of interpreted language would be overly inclusive, note that the
difference between interpreting byte code is a task that at least arguably
still belongs to the python language proper (and there even is a public
bytecode interface) whereas interpreting machine code typically falls outside
the tasks and specifications of the language that generated it. In any event,
I didn't make any claims that some particular language is *not* interpreted.


> "interpreted" usually means "no compilation, all parsing etc redone at each
> execution", which is not the case with a bytecode/vm based implementation.

When people (including the python website maintainers) talk about interpreted
languages they often include all languages that don't compile to machine code.
"Interpreted language" is not a terribly well defined concept and the usage of
words also changes to reflect general trends. Since pretty much no language of
any significance today is still interpreted in the sense you hold to be
canonical, when people talk about interpreted languages nowadays they (IMHO)
typically mean something else. This is just Grice in action.

> > And if python
> > isn't a scripting language, then what on earth is?
> 
> 
> bash is a scripting language for *n*x systems. javascript is a scripting
> language for web browsers. VBScript is a scripting language for MS
> applications.

Python is also a scripting language for *n*x systems and various applications.
 
> > You might want to argue about whether scriping language is a meaningful and
> > useful concept,
> 
> A scripting languagee is a language whose main purpose is to be embbeded in an
> application to provide the user a way of programmaticaly automate some tedious
> tasks.

A few lines ago bash was also a scripting language but I can't personally
recall ever seeing bash embedded in some application.

> Now you could of course argue about what is an application...
> 
> > but it's really hard to see how you could talk about "scripting
> > languages" without including python.
> 
> Ho, really ? How many applications using Python as scripting language ? 

I'd guess dozens. Several Gnome and Kde programs, some scientific software, a
number of games and other commercial software such as UML editors.

> And how many applications written in Python ?

No idea. My guess would be that there are far fewer high-profile end user
applications written in python than embedding python, though.
 
> Python *can* be used as a scripting language (and is not too bad at it), but
> it *is* not a scripting language.
 

Interviewer: "Why did you create Python in the first place?"
 
Guido: "We wanted Amoeba to be as useful as Unix for our daily work, but it was
        lacking a scripting language. So I set out to design my own."

Summary of my position: it's futile pedantry trying to correct someone who
claims that python is an interpreted scripting language, since neither of
these terms are terribly well defined and your definitions don't even seem to
be internally fully consistent and certainly have the appearance of
disagreeing with those of the creator of the language.

If you dislike people refering to python as "interpreted" you can always add
that it compiles to bytecode. But the poster you corrected was already aware
of that and mentioned it himself.

'as