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In other words, "Everyone can script", rather than "Everyone can program". Where by "script" I mean to write a program, but for ad hoc tasks, and on a relativel

In other words, "Everyone can script", rather than "Everyone can program". Where by "script" I mean to write a program, but for ad hoc tasks, and on a relatively small scale.

unimpressive 14y ago
I use the word "program" pretty loosely. To me, a script is a program. But for what it's worth, I think a working knowledge of the gnu utilities is worth more than most programming languages to most people. (If you're on a system that supports *nix utilities.) Ideally it's not an either or thing.
- celer 14y ago
  How would you recommend gaining that knowledge?
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    This free book: http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php The best way I know short of immersing yourself in a community of *nix geeks for a long period of time. If you were looking for something more grandmother or time friendly, I'm afraid I can't help you.
- roryokane 14y ago
  I know that a script is a program. That's why I defined “script” as “write a program […]”. I included my definition of “script” because I was worried about people misinterpreting me… but it seems people misinterpreted me anyway. With my comment, I wasn’t trying to contradict your original comment. I was just trying to reword the concepts to be more specific. “Everyone can script” was meant to be a more specific version of “Everyone can program” that might convey the concept better to those who shared or at least understood my definition of “script”.
mbetter 14y ago
I fail to see the difference.
hej 14y ago
What’s the difference? I can’t see one.
- pyre 14y ago
  I think that people are trying to coin separate terms to differentiate the amount of knowledge one needs to complete the task. E.g. writing some automation in Python is easier than writing the same automation in C due to a lack of needing to understand things like character arrays and malloc. In reality, it's all programming, just via different interfaces.
- roryokane 14y ago
  > Where by "script" I mean to write a program, but for ad hoc tasks, and on a relatively small scale. By that, I meant that a “script” is a specific type of program. “Scripting” is a subset of “programming”. Any type of program is a “program”. To be a “script”, a program must be for an ad hoc (one-time) task, and small relative to other programs. At least, according to my idea of the definition – though it is unclear what the “official” definition is.
mark_story 14y ago
There is really no difference though. Whether you 'script' away a mundane task with AppleScript or an elaborate C 'program' you still wrote down a series of instructions that were run by a machine. That's the definition of programming in some dictionaries.
- roryokane 14y ago
  I didn’t mean that “script” was an alternative to “program”. I meant that it was a subset of “program”. I tried to convey that by defining “script” as “write a program […]”. So we already agree.
jwdunne 14y ago
My definition of scripting is slightly different. Scripting, as I learned, is being able control a host program in not-so-trivial ways with an embedded programming language, where the host isn't really dedicated to running programs. Consider Lua embedded in World of Warcraft, JavaScript embedded in the browser or even mod_PHP for Apache. It's all still programming though.
mseebach 14y ago
O HAI! It's Slashdot 2001 again. Historically there was a meaningful distinction between scripting and programming: A script is interpreted, so you trade off slow execution for no compilation. A program is compiled, so you get fast execution but slow compilation. Today (as in 2001) both compilation and execution is so fast, for most use cases it doesn't really matter which you do. JITs further washes out the distinction.

In other words, "Everyone can script", rather than "Everyone can program". Where by "script" I mean to write a program, but for ad hoc tasks, and on a relatively small scale.

unimpressive 14y ago

I use the word "program" pretty loosely. To me, a script is a program. But for what it's worth, I think a working knowledge of the gnu utilities is worth more than most programming languages to most people. (If you're on a system that supports *nix utilities.) Ideally it's not an either or thing.

celer 14y ago
How would you recommend gaining that knowledge?
- unimpressive 14y ago
  This free book: http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php The best way I know short of immersing yourself in a community of *nix geeks for a long period of time. If you were looking for something more grandmother or time friendly, I'm afraid I can't help you.
roryokane 14y ago
I know that a script is a program. That's why I defined “script” as “write a program […]”. I included my definition of “script” because I was worried about people misinterpreting me… but it seems people misinterpreted me anyway. With my comment, I wasn’t trying to contradict your original comment. I was just trying to reword the concepts to be more specific. “Everyone can script” was meant to be a more specific version of “Everyone can program” that might convey the concept better to those who shared or at least understood my definition of “script”.

mbetter 14y ago

I fail to see the difference.

hej 14y ago

What’s the difference? I can’t see one.

pyre 14y ago
I think that people are trying to coin separate terms to differentiate the amount of knowledge one needs to complete the task. E.g. writing some automation in Python is easier than writing the same automation in C due to a lack of needing to understand things like character arrays and malloc. In reality, it's all programming, just via different interfaces.
roryokane 14y ago
> Where by "script" I mean to write a program, but for ad hoc tasks, and on a relatively small scale. By that, I meant that a “script” is a specific type of program. “Scripting” is a subset of “programming”. Any type of program is a “program”. To be a “script”, a program must be for an ad hoc (one-time) task, and small relative to other programs. At least, according to my idea of the definition – though it is unclear what the “official” definition is.

mark_story 14y ago

There is really no difference though. Whether you 'script' away a mundane task with AppleScript or an elaborate C 'program' you still wrote down a series of instructions that were run by a machine. That's the definition of programming in some dictionaries.

roryokane 14y ago
I didn’t mean that “script” was an alternative to “program”. I meant that it was a subset of “program”. I tried to convey that by defining “script” as “write a program […]”. So we already agree.

jwdunne 14y ago

My definition of scripting is slightly different. Scripting, as I learned, is being able control a host program in not-so-trivial ways with an embedded programming language, where the host isn't really dedicated to running programs. Consider Lua embedded in World of Warcraft, JavaScript embedded in the browser or even mod_PHP for Apache. It's all still programming though.

mseebach 14y ago

O HAI! It's Slashdot 2001 again. Historically there was a meaningful distinction between scripting and programming: A script is interpreted, so you trade off slow execution for no compilation. A program is compiled, so you get fast execution but slow compilation. Today (as in 2001) both compilation and execution is so fast, for most use cases it doesn't really matter which you do. JITs further washes out the distinction.