3 ms·

That's a really wonderful link, and I wish more people used the definition it advocates. I've one minor complaint, in that it conflates typeless and dynamically

That's a really wonderful link, and I wish more people used the definition it advocates. I've one minor complaint, in that it conflates typeless and dynamically-typed languages, but considering when it was written that's not a big deal -- strong, dynamically-typed languages probably didn't exist in any significant way. Unfortunately, almost every use of "scripting language" I've ever heard is more along the lines of: "We can't write our GUI frontend in Python^! Scripting languages are too slow for rendering advanced graphics." Usually uttered by somebody who's been writing C++ for 20 years and refuses to touch anything more recent. ^ Substitute Boo, Haskell, Scala, Clojure, or anything else without enough curly braces

Zak 16y ago
strong, dynamically-typed languages probably didn't exist in any significant way Need I do the Smug Lisp Weenie thing? That said, a lot of people didn't make the distinction between dynamically-typed and untyped twelve years ago. It was common to refer to Scheme as untyped then, and I think a few people still do.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  Prolog and APL had also been around for a while, or so I hear.
- jmillikin 16y ago
  I haven't used LISP in years, so my information may be out-of-date, but isn't it mostly untyped? I don't remember it having any mechanism for defining types -- the only types were conses and atoms (numbers, strings, etc). There was no way to say "this string is a Name and this is a City, and they are different types".
  - Zak 16y ago
    Common Lisp has several kinds of user-defined types (types, structs, classes). It is possible to write non-trivial code without ever using them, and I don't think they really fit in to traditional Lisp style. Classes are fairly popular in modern Common Lisp code.
joe_the_user 16y ago
(I know this is just an example but I can't resist commenting) "We can't write our GUI frontend in Python^! Scripting languages are too slow for rendering advanced graphics." After downloading and using Avant Windows Manager for Linux a little bit, I came to exactly that conclusion. It was horrifically slow. Maybe I'm so much smarter than the authors of that program that I could writer something acceptable where they couldn't. But I wouldn't want to take that chance. Maybe Python gives other scripting language a bad name. I've written large web apps in Python and Ruby but for desktop programs, the choices with acceptable speed that I know of are C++, java, and c#. Rapid prototype languages make sense for the web. For the desktop, I think the problem is that OSes have been adding crud at the same speed Intel has added speed. Also, the size of hard disks has increased even more quickly and thus an app that happens to index files must index 100x as many, again negating increased processor speed.
- jmillikin 16y ago
  AWN is written in C; if it's slow, that's mostly likely due to your graphics drivers.
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    Why you are correct. Well I'm really not sure what's happening because other dock programs work fairly well. Also, even the demo video here looks "slow" to me: http://www.youtube.com/v/mHDL4dIH10I http://www.youtube.com/v/mHDL4dIH10I - the icons' changes follow after the movement of the mouse. Perhaps it's just the way the thing is animated - what seems responsive is different than merely running quickly.

Zak 16y ago

strong, dynamically-typed languages probably didn't exist in any significant way Need I do the Smug Lisp Weenie thing? That said, a lot of people didn't make the distinction between dynamically-typed and untyped twelve years ago. It was common to refer to Scheme as untyped then, and I think a few people still do.

silentbicycle 16y ago
Prolog and APL had also been around for a while, or so I hear.
jmillikin 16y ago
I haven't used LISP in years, so my information may be out-of-date, but isn't it mostly untyped? I don't remember it having any mechanism for defining types -- the only types were conses and atoms (numbers, strings, etc). There was no way to say "this string is a Name and this is a City, and they are different types".
- Zak 16y ago
  Common Lisp has several kinds of user-defined types (types, structs, classes). It is possible to write non-trivial code without ever using them, and I don't think they really fit in to traditional Lisp style. Classes are fairly popular in modern Common Lisp code.

joe_the_user 16y ago

(I know this is just an example but I can't resist commenting) "We can't write our GUI frontend in Python^! Scripting languages are too slow for rendering advanced graphics." After downloading and using Avant Windows Manager for Linux a little bit, I came to exactly that conclusion. It was horrifically slow. Maybe I'm so much smarter than the authors of that program that I could writer something acceptable where they couldn't. But I wouldn't want to take that chance. Maybe Python gives other scripting language a bad name. I've written large web apps in Python and Ruby but for desktop programs, the choices with acceptable speed that I know of are C++, java, and c#. Rapid prototype languages make sense for the web. For the desktop, I think the problem is that OSes have been adding crud at the same speed Intel has added speed. Also, the size of hard disks has increased even more quickly and thus an app that happens to index files must index 100x as many, again negating increased processor speed.

jmillikin 16y ago
AWN is written in C; if it's slow, that's mostly likely due to your graphics drivers.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Why you are correct. Well I'm really not sure what's happening because other dock programs work fairly well. Also, even the demo video here looks "slow" to me: http://www.youtube.com/v/mHDL4dIH10I http://www.youtube.com/v/mHDL4dIH10I - the icons' changes follow after the movement of the mouse. Perhaps it's just the way the thing is animated - what seems responsive is different than merely running quickly.