How does scripting differ from programming

Save Article. Improve Article. Like Article. Next Compiler vs Interpreter. Recommended Articles. Article Contributed By :. Easy Normal Medium Hard Expert. Writing code in comment? Please use ide. Load Comments. It's going to automate operations on that software system. The script is going to be a sequence of instructions to the target software system.

A programming language targets the computing system, which can be a real or virtual machine. The instructions are executed by the machine.

Of course, a real machine understands only binary code so you need to compile the code of a programming language. But this is a consequence of targeting a machine instead of a program.

In the other hand, the target software system of an script may compile the code or interpret it. Is up to the software system. If we say that the real difference is whether it is compiled or not, then we have a problem because when Javascript runs in V8 is compiled and when it runs in Rhino is not. It gets more confusing since scripting languages have evolved to become very powerful. So they are not limited to create small scripts to automate operations on another software system, you can create any rich applications with them.

Python code targets an interpreter so we can say that it "scripts" operations on that interpreter. But when you write Python code you don't see it as scripting an interpreter, you see it as creating an application. The interpreter is just there to code at a higher level among other things. So for me Python is more a programming language than an scripting language.

Scripting languages are interpreted within another program. JavaScript is embedded within a browser and interpreted by that browser. Programming languages like Java are compiled and not interpreted by another application in the same way. Back when the world was young and in the PC world you chose from.

To differentiate roles and responsibilities, the compiled languages often referred to as 3rd Generation Languages were seen a 'programming' languages and 'scripting' languages were seen as those that invoked an interpreter often referred to as 4th Generation Languages. It worked well, but had a limited problem domain. The expansion of that domain was all but impossible because the source code was unavailable. It was probably one of the first widely used high-level scripting languages. It is with Perl IMHO that scripting languages crossed the arbitrary line and added the capabilities of programming languages.

Your question was specifically about Python. Because the python interpreter runs against a text file containing the python code, and that the python code can run anywhere that there is a python interpreter, I would say that it is a scripting language in the same vein as Perl. Credit for this answer goes to Jerrold Jerry Heyman.

Apart from the difference that Scripting language is Interpreted and Programming language is Compiled, there is another difference as below, which I guess has been missed.. A scripting language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. In such systems, useful functionality is already available through a user interface, and the scripting language is a mechanism for exposing that functionality to program control. I'm in a discord with the fact that languages using interpreters are scripting languages and the one gets compiled are programming languages.

We can develop an interpreter or compiler for any language. Interpreted environment suits web scripting better and makes it easier that's why we have it. Well, I feel like there isn't any difference between scripting language and programming language. It's all about getting the job done. When it comes to web related tasks we call them Web scripts considering small task and that way we may also call the system related tasks as system or OS level scripts and the programming language we use to accomplish those tasks as system scripting languages.

Also it's not so that one cannot write system level code in Python and Web scripts in C language definitely one can do if we can establish the required platform and environment. But all it takes is too much of effort which may affect the time constraint for the rapid development and the small bit of latency reduced is not going to benefit us much in web scripts. But the wise versa is not true if we perform system level tasks in Python. Bottom line: language selection depends upon the nature of the task to be performed and discriminating a language as scripting language is a myth.

In Scripting languages like JavaScript and old PHP versions we use existing fundamental functions and method for performing our job. Lets take an example in JavaScript we can use ajax or web-sockets only if they are supported by browser or methods exist or them in browser.

Basically in Scripting languages we write a code in a sequence which execute existing methods in a sequence to complete our job. Entering numbers and formula in a digital calculator to do a operation is also a very example of scripting language. We can add new methods by adding compiled extensions written in another High Level Language. We can't add high level features of networking or creating image processing libraries directly in PHP.

I am really sorry for revolving my answer around PHP JavaScript only but I use these two because I have a considerable experience in these two. Scripting languages are programming languages that people consider as scripting languages. It's an artificial category with no clear boundary, and where every proposed rule has an exception. The classical rules used to say that a language is a scripting language are characterizing, not defining.

If a language satisfies a number of the rules, there is a good chance it's considered a scripting language. If not, there's a good chance it's not. The rules usually include:. If a programming language has significant "compile-time" behavior where it analyses the code and reports errors without running the program, like type errors from C, Java or C , then it's most likely not considered a scripting language.

Traditionally a lot of scripting languages have been interpreted directly from source, but the more popular of them have gotten more performant implementations that precompile the code, like Python's.

If the language could be implemented by an interpreter, which only looks at the source code as it is running it, then it's likely considered a scripting language. Whether it actually is implemented that way is not important, but if it can be, then it also can't require extensive compile-time error checking of the code. If the language provides a useful static semantics which helps detect errors other than syntax errors without needing to run the program, it's probably not a scripting language.

There are always exceptions, usually based on tradition around a language more than any actual rule. BASIC is not usually considered a "scripting language", even though it satisfies pretty much all the criteria that anyone has ever used for being one. That's why Visual Basic Script had to add the "script" to the name, to distinguish itself from Visual Basic, a "real" programming language intended for larger programs.

BASIC is also an old programming language, like COBOL and Fortran, from before people expected static analysis from a language, and basically before "scripting languages" were even a thing. A scripting language is nothing but a programming language which does not require a clear compilation step.

So, we can say that the JavaScript is a scripting language. The coding of these programs needed to be formed in the way that the user can easily create or add new functionality to them. For this, a proper bytecode was needed to create the clear and right interface. This need led to the invention born of the scripting language. In a simple manner, a programming language is an artificial language which allows communicating between instructions and machine computer while a scripting language is a form of programming language which helps to control one or multiple applications without the need of compilation.

With the modern hardware and compilation techniques, the line between scripting and programming languages is getting more and more blurry. Languages like Python sits in both the types because many coders use this language without a compilation step, but the central part of implementation needs a compilation , and only after that it can be run in the bytecode. Same way like the programming, coding can be defined as the type of catch to write computer language, and the scripting is a particular kind of coding.