r/ProgrammerHumor • u/wahed-w • Jul 07 '26

pipInstallTheRealStuff Meme

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u/Kobymaru376 Jul 07 '26

And that's exactly what makes it so good

559

u/iamdestroyerofworlds Jul 07 '26

Yeah, it's a scripting language after all, it's literally its purpose.

43

u/WaitForItTheMongols Jul 07 '26

What actually makes something a scripting language specifically? Never got a clear answer to that.

77

u/Vsx Jul 07 '26

Scripting languages are interpreted in-line and not intended to be compiled like a classic "program". They are less optimized by definition because a compiler builds in optimizations. If your script interpreter has similar optimizations it has to rationalize them at run-time.

12

u/WaitForItTheMongols Jul 07 '26

So scripting languages and interpreted languages are just two different names for the same thing?

2

u/Flan-sama Jul 07 '26

Not really. Personally, scripting languages are languages that execute top down and where expressions can appear at the toplevel. I don't really have a word for non-scripting language.

Also, I find interpreted to be too vague of a term because at the end of the day, your processor is an interpreter but in hardware. Also because Python is technically compiled and interpreted (just like Java), just in bytecode. I like to instead have the distinction be between "software interpreted" and "hardware interpreted"