[ruby-talk:01436] Re: Scripting versus programming

From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <[e-mail]>

> Hi,
>
> In message "[ruby-talk:01376] Re: Scripting versus programming"
>     on 00/02/15, Andrew Hunt <[e-mail]> writes:
> |
> |Conrad writes:
> |
> |    >I recommend that we (and Ruby documentation) describe Ruby first and
> |    >foremost as "one of the world's most powerful programming
languages", and
> |    >subsequently mention that is also enormously useful for
scripting--if, when,
> |    >and where appropriate. This may (or probably should) sound trite to
> |    >technically astute people, many business/IT decisions at tens of
thousands
> |    >of shops world-wide are unfortunately made on the basis of
superficial
> |    >impressions.
> |
> |I agree whole-heartedly!
> |
> |I think it is misleading to call Ruby a scripting language, and
> |the unelightened might mistake it for another VB or Perl, or
> |even a replacement for JavaScript.
>
> Well, I mean the followings by the word `scripting':
>
>   * interpretive
>   * easy to program
>   * very high level language
>   * prenty of features to manipulate files and strings
>   * language for the future, according Ousterhout
>
> all of these attributes are covered and targeted by Ruby.
> But in case you feel `scripting' bothers, you can call it whatever.

Well, I don't think there is any problem with what *you* mean by
scripting--it's what it means to many *other* people that makes us
concerned.

First let me mention that I admire Ousterhout for his early pioneering work
and for widely promoting genuinely simple and genuinely cross-platform
scripting languages and his contributions to the open source movement.

But while his definitions are useful for getting people to use Tcl for those
tasks where it really is a much better choice than C++ or Java--which is
very good--his definitions *also* put Tcl in the same class as Perl5 and
Scheme and Smalltalk and Ruby--which is *extremely* misleading.

For this and other reasons, most people in this part of the world generally
seem to associate scripting with such things as ordinary shell script
writing or with what people do who lack the aptitude or training or
inclination for doing "real" programming or for doing "real" work.

Conrad