Brief Contemplation: Is Script Programming Really Programming?

[stefan_schnell]

Hello community,

 

let us clarify in this context first what is technically the difference between a programming language and a scripting language? I do not know a specific definition, so in my eyes is the difference that a programming language compiles the source code to a machine code and run on the hardware of the underlying operating system. Scripting languages does not require an explicit compilation step and interprets the source code. The concepts of the languages itself are more or less identically, like control conditions, variables, loops, etc. The performance difference between this kind of languages is actually minimal, because modern hardware and scripting engines interpretes the code on the fly very fast. It seems that the only difference is that a programming language can create an executable binary which runs natively on the operating system, while a scripting language needs a runtime environment. But Java and the dotNET languages needs also a runtime environment. You see, this can be an academic discussion. Last but not least can we say that the difference is very small, the frontiers between programming and scripting languages is blurred. From this perspective one can say clearly, script programming is really programming.

Cheers
Stefan