4 ms·

So, what in your opinion constitutes a "real language", and why?

• dec0dedab0de 7y ago
  a "real language" would be any programming language that is primarily designed and presented as a programming language.
  • jascii 7y ago
    Nice recursive definition.. The practice of programming in shell languages was well established when Bash was designed and Bash was definitely designed with that use in mind. So by your definition Bash is a "real" programming language. Lisp on the other hand, was much more designed as a system and formal notation to reason about certain classes of logic problems.. So, Lisp is not a "real" language?
    • jigglesniggle 7y ago
      By "programming language" he probably means something that has robust flow control mechanisms and metaprogramming facilities. You can definitely tell there's a different "feel" to bash and Tcl, Python, Perl, Go, etc, yes? Shell languages basically evolved out of batch processing languages that were meant to only run programs in sequence and it shows.
    • dec0dedab0de 7y ago
      Bash is primarily a shell, it even has the word shell in its full name.
      • jascii 7y ago
        And a shell can't be a real language? https://scsh.net/ https://scsh.net/
        • dec0dedab0de 7y ago
          a shell can't be a real language? No, it can not.