language interpreters/ interpreted languages weaknesses?

[William Tanksley]

On Thu, 02 Sep 1999 14:38:48 GMT, Mr Kelvin Lee wrote:

>btw... are 'scripting languages' the same things as 'interpreted
>lanaguages??

No.  Scripting is the act of directing something's actions; thus calling
something a scripting language implies that it's used for directing
something outside of the language.

In the old days, the only way to script an application was for the
application to include its own scripting language.  Nowadays, any language
can be used to script, and we refer to languages which are designed for
that purpose as scripting languages.  Python will not lose any of its
ability to script when someone makes a compiler for it.

And BTW, the definition "if you can't change a running program then it's
compiled..." is faulty -- there are many interpreted languages you can't
change at runtime, and there are many Lisp compilers.

>KL.

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley