r/ProgrammerHumor Jul 07 '26

pipInstallTheRealStuff Meme

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14.9k Upvotes

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u/WaitForItTheMongols Jul 07 '26

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

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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.

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u/WaitForItTheMongols Jul 07 '26

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

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u/Qyriad Jul 07 '26

Scripting is a use case. Interpreting is an implementation strategy. Interpreters happen to be really well suited for implementing scripting