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All of those complaints are from the quote. 1) All the more reason not to introduce incorrect terminology; non-technical people won't be able to understand tha

All of those complaints are from the quote. 1) All the more reason not to introduce incorrect terminology; non-technical people won't be able to understand that it's wrong. 3) There are legitimate definitions of "scripting languages"; the one I use is that a scripting language is not useful without 3rd-party code. The Bourne shell and JavaScript are classic examples of scripting languages. QuakeC is a scripting language which isn't executed in line order. 4) Values are procedures (PHP doesn't have functions; the keyword is mis-named), classes, or variables. They do not have to be declared before use in PHP -- if they did, writing mutually-recursive procedures would be impossible in PHP. 5) I see nothing "obvious" about your statement. They state that compiling results in a separate file, which is wrong because some compilers don't. 6) JavaScript (in all popular implementations), Python, JVM languages (Java, Scala), .NET languages (C#, F#, VB.NET), Perl 6. I think even Ruby has a bytecode compiler, now. 7) There is no indication that this new PHP implementation compiles to native executables. 8) Their claim is that compilation makes execution faster. There exist cases where compilation does not make execution faster. Therefore, their claim is incorrect. 9) Their quote states that compiled binaries don't have to be read from beginning to end to execute. This is incorrect. When a binary is executed, or a library linked, it is loaded entirely into memory.

pbiggar 17y ago
1) Whatever your opinion, the quotee is not wrong. 3) Please define it. Note that I spend six pages in my PhD on defining it, and there are no formal definitions. Ousterout introduced the term, and didn't define it. That's a crap definition of scripting language. I don't even know what it means, and it's unusable. C++ is pretty much useless without the C++ standard library. Is it a scripting language now? 3) Nice. The fact that you could dredge up a minor language which peaked in 1996 does not make the quotee wrong. 4) This is all wrong. > They do not have to be declared before use in PHP -- if they did, writing mutually-recursive procedures would be impossible in PHP. Whether or not mutually recursive procedures have to be declared is a matter of parsing style. For example, its there in C since it was created using a one-pass compiler. Its not there in Java. In PHP, declaring a function (say x) puts the function into the function-symbol table under the entry "x". When calling x(), the function-table is looked up. It is not necessary to have defined x to parse code that uses it. For example: if (false) { x(); } // legit, x() is never called In a single PHP file, classes and functions declared in the top scope are considered declared at the top of the file. This can lend the appearance that they are not required to be declared, but its a hack. If you include a file later, dont expect to call its functions now. > Values are procedures, classes, or variables. I presume you mean that variables, classes and procedures are all kinds of values. That is simply incorrect. Classes are not first-class values, and first-class classes and functions are approximated in PHP by allowing classes to be instantiated by name (using a string) at run-time. This is changing slightly in 5.3, but the semantics are complicated, and still use strings. Variables are just syntax in PHP. As I said, look at any literature on PHP (or javascript if you prefer). Variables are syntax for keys in a local symbol-table, and aren't real entities. They are certainly not values. > PHP doesn't have functions; the keyword is mis-named. Evidence? I can't think how this is correct. 5) So what if some compilers don't. Nearly all compilers do. The level of pedantry here is astounding. Just because you can list an edge case in which they are wrong, does not make them wrong in the general case. 6) Ah, your definition of "compiled" is "bytecode compiled". What a funny circular argument. 7) Except that the quotee says it! "But with a compiled language, the program you write is compiled into an executable file." 8) "Is a rocketship faster than a bicycle?" Yes. "Aha, but if my rocket isnt moving, the bicycle is faster. Therefore I assert that rocketships are _not_ faster than bicycles". Bollox. 9) Loading from memory is not "reading" in the sense the quotee used, which was clearly parsing. I think you're being deliberately obstinate: try using the context of the article to determine what the words mean. I could argue that binaries do not have to be fully read into memory (they are loaded lazily, page-by-4k-page, by most modern OSes), but I don't want to start a discussion on it. Heaven forbid an obscure 90s OS used 8k pages. Anyway, you're deliberately twisting the quotee's words and being pedantic, so I'm done here.
- dkersten 17y ago
  6) A lot of people share his definition - for example, everyone who says that Java, C# etc are compiled languages. I think thats enough people to make this definition true. 8) Being natively compiled does not make that program automatically faster. It depends on the use case (I/O vs compute bound) and it also depends on the quality and complexity of the code generator and optimizer. Furthermore, bytecode compiled languages (as opposed to native compiled) may be able to better optimize at runtime using JIT compilation due to being able to make assumptions you couldn't make at "compile time" in AOT compilation. Saying that natively compiled programs are faster than other kinds of programs is simply not always true.
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pbiggar 17y ago

1) Whatever your opinion, the quotee is not wrong. 3) Please define it. Note that I spend six pages in my PhD on defining it, and there are no formal definitions. Ousterout introduced the term, and didn't define it. That's a crap definition of scripting language. I don't even know what it means, and it's unusable. C++ is pretty much useless without the C++ standard library. Is it a scripting language now? 3) Nice. The fact that you could dredge up a minor language which peaked in 1996 does not make the quotee wrong. 4) This is all wrong. > They do not have to be declared before use in PHP -- if they did, writing mutually-recursive procedures would be impossible in PHP. Whether or not mutually recursive procedures have to be declared is a matter of parsing style. For example, its there in C since it was created using a one-pass compiler. Its not there in Java. In PHP, declaring a function (say x) puts the function into the function-symbol table under the entry "x". When calling x(), the function-table is looked up. It is not necessary to have defined x to parse code that uses it. For example: if (false) { x(); } // legit, x() is never called In a single PHP file, classes and functions declared in the top scope are considered declared at the top of the file. This can lend the appearance that they are not required to be declared, but its a hack. If you include a file later, dont expect to call its functions now. > Values are procedures, classes, or variables. I presume you mean that variables, classes and procedures are all kinds of values. That is simply incorrect. Classes are not first-class values, and first-class classes and functions are approximated in PHP by allowing classes to be instantiated by name (using a string) at run-time. This is changing slightly in 5.3, but the semantics are complicated, and still use strings. Variables are just syntax in PHP. As I said, look at any literature on PHP (or javascript if you prefer). Variables are syntax for keys in a local symbol-table, and aren't real entities. They are certainly not values. > PHP doesn't have functions; the keyword is mis-named. Evidence? I can't think how this is correct. 5) So what if some compilers don't. Nearly all compilers do. The level of pedantry here is astounding. Just because you can list an edge case in which they are wrong, does not make them wrong in the general case. 6) Ah, your definition of "compiled" is "bytecode compiled". What a funny circular argument. 7) Except that the quotee says it! "But with a compiled language, the program you write is compiled into an executable file." 8) "Is a rocketship faster than a bicycle?" Yes. "Aha, but if my rocket isnt moving, the bicycle is faster. Therefore I assert that rocketships are _not_ faster than bicycles". Bollox. 9) Loading from memory is not "reading" in the sense the quotee used, which was clearly parsing. I think you're being deliberately obstinate: try using the context of the article to determine what the words mean. I could argue that binaries do not have to be fully read into memory (they are loaded lazily, page-by-4k-page, by most modern OSes), but I don't want to start a discussion on it. Heaven forbid an obscure 90s OS used 8k pages. Anyway, you're deliberately twisting the quotee's words and being pedantic, so I'm done here.

dkersten 17y ago
6) A lot of people share his definition - for example, everyone who says that Java, C# etc are compiled languages. I think thats enough people to make this definition true. 8) Being natively compiled does not make that program automatically faster. It depends on the use case (I/O vs compute bound) and it also depends on the quality and complexity of the code generator and optimizer. Furthermore, bytecode compiled languages (as opposed to native compiled) may be able to better optimize at runtime using JIT compilation due to being able to make assumptions you couldn't make at "compile time" in AOT compilation. Saying that natively compiled programs are faster than other kinds of programs is simply not always true.

deleted 17y ago

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