[PD] "Scripting languages" ?

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Sun, 23 May 2010, Pedro Lopes wrote:

> Its just definitions that get caught up in "trends". There's a perfect 
> portuguese idiomatic expression for that, that would loosely translate 
> into "mouth-to-mouth definitions" - whereas a concept gets standardized 
> without any formal foundations or efforts but because of heavy community 
> use

That's an important concept and I am glad that you wrote it down.

It can explain a lot of things... especially the big mess made with words 
like "technology" and "art".

> As for pseudo-code, when in first years of college that really striked 
> me. The definition of it was supposed to strive for a language-free 
> syntax, but it always looked C to me - so I guess that's true for your 
> argument as "political bargain".

Well, to be more complete, there are other varieties of pseudo-code with 
different syntaxes, which led an undergrad student to tell me that Python 
is executable pseudo-code. AFAIR, the indentation syntax of Python comes 
from a certain variety of pseudo-code that already existed. In general, 
pseudo-code also has an aim of being more abstract and concise than actual 
C/PASCAL code, which is often the goal of "scripting languages".

That was a few years after a fellow undergrad student (at a different 
university) told me, very lucidly : « Now I understand what is 
pseudo-code. It's code that doesn't work » (loosely translated from 
French). That's because pseudo-code is designed to be non-runnable.

> The article I quote was not showing a correct view but more like "where 
> does this "trend" comes from"... (and by trend I mean the 
> segmentation/naive classification of scripting langs vs. others).

ah ok.

> >LISP is a traditional language that is interpreted, yet became quite compiled as an option. It's quite
> Of course, I use compiled LISP on a regular basis :)

But I mean that LISP was interpreted in its original implementation. (this 
postdates the original LISP spec by a few years, which was designed as a 
spec for a special-purpose pseudo-code. against the will of the author, 
his students turned LISP into a runnable language and made it possibly the 
first interpreted language ever...)

LISP is also quite hard to classify in one bucket of languages. You can 
use it as a test of adequacy of a language classification : where do you 
put LISP in it, and why ? Thus it's also a great way to destroy 
unnecessary distinctions in how we call the languages, which is why I 
mention it.

> its nice nice to share some feelings/opinions on this subject, I 
> strongly feel that it has become a "buzz" word, rather than something 
> people have strongly defined

the concept of buzzword isn't opposed to strongly-defined concepts, but 
the process of "buzzing" does add a layer of connotations and myth around 
the core concept, in a way that can be quite misleading. with great 
popularisation of a concept, comes a great misunderstanding of the 
concept. It isn't as bad a hype, though, because mouth-to-mouth 
definitions are still more accurate than anything designed by a salesman 
with the only goal of making a product (or service) look good.

> I was saying (and thinking): "When you are scripting you are 
> programming, and vice versa" - so where's the line separating 
> scripting/programming languages? Is there any need for a line? Do we 
> gain to have such differentiation? Define them... and so on.

ah, alright.

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| Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone: +1.514.383.3801