What does it mean to be a scripting Language?

[Clayton]

I've heard the term, but what exactly does it mean, what is the difference as opposed to different languages? What are their general pros and cons?

[wtd]

There are many ideas thrown about as to what this term means.

For some, it's any dynamically-typed programming language. Lisp, Ruby, Python, Smalltalk, etc.

For others, it's any language that is used primarily to execute and capture the output of other programming languages. Various shell languages follow this model.

For yet others it's any language which is interpreted rather than being compiled to machine code for an actual physical CPU. This may mean it uses an interpreter, or is compiled to machine code for a virtual machine that is CPU agnostic.

For still others "scripting language" can be used to describe any language with support for high-level data structures in syntactically convenient forms.

It is a very sticky debate.

[Clayton]

So basically, a scripted language could be one of many, and that there is really no solid difference between a scripting language and another language. Hmm, well thanks for that wtd.

[wtd]

Basically. The issue is further complicated by the fact that "scripting language" is often used as a derogatory remark by users of more "heavy-weight" languages, such as C, C++, Java, etc.

[Clayton]

How is it considered derogatory? Do high level C++, C, and Java programmers consider languages like Ruby too simplistic?

[wtd]

There is a tendency among some programmers in those languages to look down upon such languages, yes.

As for why... you'd have to ask them.

[[Gandalf]]

A very similar topic was discussed a bit by wtd: here.