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Scripting Language City

Posted by timothy on from the which-portal-please dept.

Ursus Maximus writes "Scripting Language City is for folks who want to learn more about the future of this increasingly important subset of the programming universe. Scripting languages are not just for odd jobs anymore ;-))). Special attention is paid to four languages in Python City, Ruby City, Perl City, and JavaScript Expert Systems which includes a Scripting Language Chooser Program as well as a Basketball Expert Ssystem and a Football Expert System that are certainly something different from the usual same old mouse-over scripts usually found on JavaScript sites. There is also a web spider program that scrapes the web daily and provides updated lists of new web articles on scripting languages, with seperates outputs for each of the featured languages. as added bonuses, there is a page of essays and resources on open source and the free software movement called Farnham's Freehold and a page called The Linux Chronicles that follows the experiences of a Linux newbie with wit and humor. Not a slick professional web site, Scripting Language City is a work of love by a paramour of everything connected with scripting languages, open source, and the programming of free software."

4 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Web design by AndyAMPohl · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm sure the content is quite useful, and I'll probably take advantage of the Python site at some point, but goodness. Don't people still care about aesthetics? The font size/colors are just awful.

    Andy

  2. Re:what about VBA? by __past__ · · Score: 5, Informative
    There are several common definitions of "scripting language", none of which is very useful.

    Perl, Python and Java get compiled to bytecode, too - but (AFAIK) Perl always compiles to bytecode "on the fly" and never stores it on disk, Python compiles modules on the first import and keeps bytecode files for faster future loading, and Java uses only the byte-compiled files. Other languages, like OCaml or Lisp, can be interpreted or compiled to either byte- or native code. Somebody wrote an interpreter for C. So, which of these languages is a scripting language?

    I guess the best definition would be "People are more likely to consider it for smaller projects". It's not a property of a language or an implementation of a language (which might be identical, e.g. perl defines Perl), but of the mindset of it's users.

    That said, the term "scripting" originally meant writing glue code to control the "real" app, which is pretty much what VBA does. (BTW, you do know the difference between VB and VBA, do you? VB is the one that is used for standalone apps, while VBA is what you get in the "macro editor" of MS Office. They are not the same language.)

    --
    Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
  3. Exactly what is the definition... by bihoy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thank you for the clarification. I *was* thinking of VB and not VBA.
    I just did a bit of research to try to find the definition of a scripting language.
    Apparently so have a lot of other folks, as I came across the following:

    The Definition os a Scripting Language

  4. Re:Factors in choosing a scripting language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    They seem pretty off-the-cuff to me. Perhaps they say as much about the opinions of the Web site author as they do about the languages.

    and the knowledge of the author, as a -10 for server side javascript seems to imply impossibility (as it is the same -10 for client side perl, python, ruby), but server side javascript exists and is used.