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Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 03:39:19 +0100
From: MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com>
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To: python-list@python.org
Subject: Re: Python development tools
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On 25/06/2013 03:24, rusi wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 25, 2013 4:41:22 AM UTC+5:30, Ben Finney wrote:
>> rusi  writes:
>> > I dont however think that the two philosophies are the same. See
>> > http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html
>>
>> That essay constrasts “scripting” versus “system programming”, a useful
>> (though terminologically confusing) distinction.
>>
>> It's a mistake to think that essay contrasts “scripting“ versus
>> “programming”. But the essay never justifies its aversion to
>> “programming” as a term for what it's describing, so that mistake is
>> easy to make.
>
> The essay is 15 years old. So a bit dated. Referred to it as it conveys the sense/philosophy of scripting.
>
>>
>> > On Monday, June 24, 2013 11:50:38 AM UTC+5:30, Ben Finney wrote:
>> > > Any time someone has shown me a “Python script”, I don't see how
>> > > it's different from what I'd call a “Python program”. So I just
>> > > mentally replace “scripting with “programming”.
>> >
>> > If you are saying that python spans the scripting to programming
>> > spectrum exceptionally well, I agree.
>>
>> I'm saying that “scripting” is a complete subset of “programming”, so
>> it's nonsense to talk about “the scripting-to-programming spectrum”.
>>
>> Scripting is, always, programming. Scripts are, always, programs. (But
>> not vice-versa; I do acknowledge there is more to programming than
>> scripting.) I say this because anything anyone has said to me about the
>> former is always something included already by the latter.
>>
>> So I don't see much need for treating scripts as somehow distinct from
>> programs, or scripting as somehow distinct from programming. Whenever
>> you're doing the former, you're doing the latter by definition.
>>
>
> My personal associations with the word 'scripting'
>
> - Cavalier attitude towards efficiency

And convenience for the programmer.

"""Manipulating long texts using variable-length strings? Yes, I know 
it's inefficient, but it's still faster than doing it by hand!"""

> - No interest (and maybe some scorn) towards over-engineering (hence OOP)
> - Heavy use of regular expressions, also sophistication of the command-line args
> - A sense (maybe vague) of being glue more than computation, eg. a bash script is almost certain to invoke something other than builtins alone and is more likely to invoke a non-bash script than a bash script.  For a C program that likelihood is the other way round.  For python it could be either
>
Automating tasks, e.g. controlling other applications and stringing 
together tasks that you would otherwise be doing by hand.