Programming And Scripting Languages
We often use phrases like scripting in python and programming in java, but is there any difference?
Most people use the terms, programming and scripting synonymously, but they do have different meanings.
All scripting languages are programming languages, all programming languages are not scripting languages.
Simply said, scripting languages are a subset of programming languages.
What is Programming Language?
A programming language is essentially a formal language that combines a set of instructions that can be fed into the computer to generate a specific output. Programming languages were created to create products like Microsoft Word, Powerpoint. Example: Java, C, C++.
What is Scripting Language?
Scripting languages are high level, general-purpose language which are dynamic in nature. A scripting language is a programming language that does not require an explicit step of compilation. Scripting languages are often interpreted rather than compiled. Example: Python, JavaScript, Php.
Differences
The most notable difference between the two is in their execution – programming languages use a compiler to convert the high-level programming languages into machine language, on the other hand, scripting languages use an interpreter. A compiler compiles a code in a complete chunk, an interpreter compiles a code line by line. For example, in normal circumstances, we compile code written in C before execution, whereas we don’t need to compile JavaScript/Python code before running.
Programming Languages are more often used to create something from scratch whereas Scripting languages can be used to combined existing component or module.
Programming languages are designed in such a way a developer can take full advantage of features of a language, whereas Scripting languages are designed to make coding faster and simpler.
The compiled codes execute faster than the interpreted codes as they are changed into a native machine program. In a compiler, the overall code is analyzed just once in the whole cycle, and it submits the overall encountered errors. At the same, the interpreter analyzes the entire program every time and halts the execution if any error is encountered.
References
- https://www.educba.com/programming-vs-scripting
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17253545/scripting-language-vs-programming-language
- https://www.programmingeeks.com/scripting-vs-programming-languages/