• nyan@lemmy.cafe
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    5 days ago

    Some people think that only compiled languages are true programming languages. (Needless to say, they’re wrong.)

    • Malgas@beehaw.org
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      5 days ago

      Needless to say, they’re wrong.

      Not least because there’s no such thing as a “compiled” or “interpreted” language.

      Which is to say that it’s a property of the tooling rather than the language itself. There’s nothing stopping anyone from writing a C interpreter or a Python compiler.

      • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        There’s nothing stopping anyone from writing a C interpreter

        Except god, hopefully

      • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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        4 days ago

        Not least because there’s no such thing as a “compiled” or “interpreted” language.

        I’d say there is (but the line is a bit blurry). IMHO the main distinction is the presence (and prevalence) of eval semantics in the language; if it is present, then any “compiler” would have to embed itself into the generated code, thus de-facto turning it into a bundled interpreter.

        That said, the argument that interpreted languages are somehow not programming languages is stupid.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      5 days ago

      Yeah, once you know all the details, the distinction disappears. The term doesn’t clarify understanding.

      If I had to make a distinction, it’d be that scripting languages are meant to be a simple way to serve a specific niche. Things like SQL or Excel formulas. It doesn’t apply to Python.