[seanhunter]

There are no such things as “serving spoons” — any spoon is a serving spoon if you serve something with it.

There are no such things as “desert spoons” — any spoon is a desert spoon if you eat desert with it.

Don’t get me started on whether or not teaspoons exist.

This is such a pointless observation given the world has really come down heavily on the side of sanity, which is to say yes clearly any language can be used for scripting but “scripting languages” are those languages for which writing scripts is the primary purpose. Just like, while you can serve food with any spoon in a pinch, if you really want a spoon that is specialised for serving, a serving spoon is what you are crying out for.

If everyone understands exactly what they mean when they say “scripting language” or “statically typed” and these terms are frequently used to bootstrap understanding of other languages, are they really wrong to use those terms? This isn’t “nonsense taxonomy”, it’s using language in the normal way for the purposes of communicating with human beings, which is something most people try to do.

[rickydroll]

It seems like the term "scripting language" has become a pejorative; denigrating a programming language as somehow less worthy for "serious" programs than non-scripting languages. To me, when I hear someone describe a language as a scripting language, it says more about how they think about programming than the functionality and applicability of a language for solving different classes of problems.

I'm coming to think different programing languages are more like a patois or creole. an expression of ideas shaped by the speaker's thoughts and experience in the world. Sometimes the patois de jour taps into a common experience (e.g. python) or not (e.g. forth).

[seanhunter]

100% agree. And just like you don’t talk to a new-born child in quantifier logic and you don’t attempt to write a PhD thesis in babytalk, there are places where more or less rigorous and exacting language is appropriate.

It used to be the general consensus was that “scripting” comprised quick and temporary automation of tasks and therefore the emphasis in a language was on something convenient and expressive that could get a bunch of stuff done quickly even if the semantics were a bit janky (I’m looking at you bourne shell). Then perl really opened a lot of people’s eyes to what could be done with “scripting languages” (both in terms of power and in terms of the horror that could unleash in the wrong hands) and there has since been a gradual shift towards simplicity and understandability given that there are few things more permanent than a temporary script.

[crabbone]

> There are no such things as “serving spoons” — any spoon is a serving spoon if you serve something with it.

> There are no such things as “desert spoons” — any spoon is a desert spoon if you eat desert with it.

That's not how that works. Eating a dessert is not what makes a dessert spoon what it is. There are multiple criteria which all go into deciding whether a spoon is a desert spoon. For example, dessert spoon cannot be bigger than a table spoon if they are sold as a set.

This isn't true for languages. There's nothing to warrant a title of "scripting" to a language. Nothing that would allow you to discern a "scripting language" from a non-scripting one. This terminology lack internal consistency. You could try to define what that means for you, and that could make the definition valid, but there isn't a shared coherent explanation for how to tell a scripting language from a non-scripting.

> If everyone understands exactly what they mean when they say “scripting language”

Well, here's where you are confused: no, nobody understands what exactly they mean when they say "scripting language". Far from it. It's similar to the situation with fruits and vegetables. Unless you know about the controversy, you might be convinced that you know very well what is a fruit or what is a vegetable, but you will find that not only there isn't a consensus on individual plants, but that there isn't even a consensus on the definition.

So, similarly, if you want to be precise, and you want to use the word "fruit", you need to consider the context in which you are using it and make sure that whoever you are talking to knows what sort of a definition you are using.

But, it's even worse with "scripting languages" because any of the definitions I know are without merit. They don't describe any useful property of a programming language. Knowing that some language is a scripting language doesn't help you understand what can it be used for or what to expect from it etc.

The unfortunate reality is that beyond various aspects of extensions of context-free language group we don't have any useful means for creating of language taxonomy. All we have is a bunch ob b/s often inspired by marketing departments of companies pushing those languages. But we crave taxonomy. It's just the one that we have is worthless...