5 ms·

what constitutes a scripting language? It's indeed a bit fuzzy, but program execution without separate compilation (which is not a feature of a language per se

by cygx 9y ago

what constitutes a scripting language? It's indeed a bit fuzzy, but program execution without separate compilation (which is not a feature of a language per se) is something I'd look for. As far as intrinsic language features go, a lack of boilerplate in the sense of print("hello") vs class Hello { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("hello"); } } is a good indicator, as is dynamic typing.

weberc2 9y ago
This isn't a meaningful definition because compilation and execution under a single command is trivial for any compiled language, including Go and Python and PHP. As for lack of boilerplate, Haskell and many statically-typed, compiled functional languages have less boilerplate than PHP or Python. Dynamic typing is more meaningful, but regardless of definition, I fail to see why it's useful to restrict the scope to scripting languages. However, even if you make this restriction, there are many, many languages that are dynamically typed "scripting" languages that are much faster than PHP and Python (JRuby, Lua, JS, Wren, most lisps, etc).
- igouy 9y ago
  > dynamically typed "scripting" languages that are much faster than PHP and Python (JRuby ? http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=python3&lang2=jruby http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan...
  - weberc2 9y ago
    That's not the graal backend. The TruffleRuby project uses Graal to make JRuby much, much faster. I don't know what the specific information, but generally "competitive with Java" is my understanding. Perhaps "TruffleRuby" is the name I should have used; it's not apparent and I'm only nominally familiar with the project.
    - igouy 9y ago
      Current Status: "TruffleRuby is progressing fast but is currently probably not ready for you to try running your full Ruby application on." https://github.com/graalvm/truffleruby#current-status https://github.com/graalvm/truffleruby#current-status
      - weberc2 9y ago
        Ok, I was wrong about Ruby, but my point stands--Python and PHP are not even "speed demons" of the so-called scripting languages.
hasenj 9y ago
D and Go compilers can both run a script seamlessly without a visible compilation step (it still happens, but behind the scenes, and compilation is fast enough that you would not even notice it).
- cygx 9y ago
  That's what makes it fuzzy. I would argue that the defining characteristic of a scripting language is the ability to execute scripts instead of generate binaries. You could then make a further distinctions between application scripting languages (the origin of Lua and Javascript) and general-purpose scripting languages (which are independent of a host application - think Perl or Python). This distinction is not sharp: Today, Lua and Javascript are used as general-purpose scripting languages, people ship 'fakecutables', packaging script and runtime system into a binary, and even C++ has been used to script applications (physicists are silly people ;)). But there's normally still a dominant usage pattern associated with a given language, so the classification is not entire useless.

by cygx 9y ago

weberc2 9y ago

This isn't a meaningful definition because compilation and execution under a single command is trivial for any compiled language, including Go and Python and PHP. As for lack of boilerplate, Haskell and many statically-typed, compiled functional languages have less boilerplate than PHP or Python. Dynamic typing is more meaningful, but regardless of definition, I fail to see why it's useful to restrict the scope to scripting languages. However, even if you make this restriction, there are many, many languages that are dynamically typed "scripting" languages that are much faster than PHP and Python (JRuby, Lua, JS, Wren, most lisps, etc).

igouy 9y ago
> dynamically typed "scripting" languages that are much faster than PHP and Python (JRuby ? http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=python3&lang2=jruby http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan...
- weberc2 9y ago
  That's not the graal backend. The TruffleRuby project uses Graal to make JRuby much, much faster. I don't know what the specific information, but generally "competitive with Java" is my understanding. Perhaps "TruffleRuby" is the name I should have used; it's not apparent and I'm only nominally familiar with the project.
  - igouy 9y ago
    Current Status: "TruffleRuby is progressing fast but is currently probably not ready for you to try running your full Ruby application on." https://github.com/graalvm/truffleruby#current-status https://github.com/graalvm/truffleruby#current-status
    - weberc2 9y ago
      Ok, I was wrong about Ruby, but my point stands--Python and PHP are not even "speed demons" of the so-called scripting languages.

hasenj 9y ago

D and Go compilers can both run a script seamlessly without a visible compilation step (it still happens, but behind the scenes, and compilation is fast enough that you would not even notice it).

cygx 9y ago
That's what makes it fuzzy. I would argue that the defining characteristic of a scripting language is the ability to execute scripts instead of generate binaries. You could then make a further distinctions between application scripting languages (the origin of Lua and Javascript) and general-purpose scripting languages (which are independent of a host application - think Perl or Python). This distinction is not sharp: Today, Lua and Javascript are used as general-purpose scripting languages, people ship 'fakecutables', packaging script and runtime system into a binary, and even C++ has been used to script applications (physicists are silly people ;)). But there's normally still a dominant usage pattern associated with a given language, so the classification is not entire useless.