[OT] difference of Scripting and programming

[Jeff Kinz]

On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 09:12:05PM -0500, Jeff Vian wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 19:35 -0400, Jeff Kinz wrote:
> > On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 04:28:51PM -0500, Jeff Vian wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 13:58 -0400, Jeff Kinz wrote:
> This branch of the discussion is related to whether scripting is
> programming.  Ian's definition seemed very close and about as complete
> as 3 sentences could be.  Scripting is programming, albeit in a
> different language than you seem to routinely use.

Nope. Bad assumption. These days I do more scripting than programming.
I do tons of both. 95% of the time, provided you have chosen your tools
correctly, your programming work will be more complex and technical than
your scripting work. What type of language would you write a kernel in?
How about a real time embedded application? A Large vocabulary speech
recognition system? A database system?  Image processing system?

> > > when as users, most people are only concerned about the question of
> > > "Does it do what I need done?" ? Lets be realistic and remember that
> > > this is a users mail list and not a programmers mail list.
> > 
> > Lets also remember these two things:
> > Finding the answer to "Does it do what I need done?" is made easier when
> > more precise descriptions are used. And this is a "Linux" user's mailing
> > list and almost every one on it are either programmers, admins or some
> > other fairly technical position.  Respect their intelligence, don't dumb

> That categorization of list members is not even close.  A few years ago
> that was true.  Today I see most of the questions (and almost as many
> answers) coming from new users (often referred to as newbies), 

Again, No, and we had more newbies on the RHIL list.  Suggest you do a
quick sort on subject lines.

> Being too technical in replies can be as much a deterrent to new users
> as refusing to provide an answer.  
I quite agree. Try teaching grocery store staff how to manage UNIX
systems ... by phone before there were any GUI tools to admin the
systems. That experience teaches us the good terminology usage is much
more helpful than trying to dumb things down.  Always try to call things by
their right names. (but don't make new user's drink from the firehose).

> And, BTW, please explain to system admins that they are not writing
> programs when they do shell scripts or the like to handle management
> tasks on their systems.  

Guys, We are not writing programs, we are writing scripts.
(How was that ?) :-)

> And help them to understand that those scripts
> are less important to them than the binary programs that you are so
> proud of and seem to feel are more germane to every day life.  

I'm sorry JeffV, but that is your own personal hallucination.

Whatever you're on, its making you read things between the lines that
not even the folks who wrote the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" speeches
could dream up.

Please quote the section where I said anything like what you impugn
above or shut up.

You've been getting much more vehement than this discussion calls for in
this and your last email and you keep attributing to me things I did not
say or think.

I'm beginning to think that the actual source of your level of emotion
here has more to do with your past than this actual email thread.


> 
> All programming is equally important at different levels, and you should
Certainly,  different jobs have different tasks.  never said otherwise.

> you should not try to claim writing a compiled program is more
> necessary or technical than someone's script may be.

Whoa! Sorry, but you need to go do some reading. Especially about how
code complexity measurements are done. While I'm certain that no one
will dispute that both are necessary, (I sure don't, I want to get
paid for my scripting!), it can absolutely be shown that programming
in "non-scripting languages" requires the knowledge worker to "keep
more balls in the air". Not only is "non-scripting programming" more
complex, it is generally also used to build more complex applications.
Yes it is harder, and its a lot slower too. Each type has its own set of
advantages and disadvantages which make it a better choice for certain
types of work.

Here is the lines of code count from the Linux Kernel 2.4 kernel:
ansic:      2288234 (93.74%)
asm:         144552 (5.92%)
sh:            3035 (0.12%)
perl:          2022 (0.08%)
yacc:          1147 (0.05%)
cpp:            731 (0.03%)
tcl:            576 (0.02%)
lex:            302 (0.01%)
awk:            248 (0.01%)
sed:             72 (0.00%)

The first line is ansi C, second line is assembly language. 99%+
of the code.  The remainder is all scripting languages.  Care to guess
which subset is more complex?  Code size is the first (and crudest)
measure of complexity.

Take a look at this article:
http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/1994/12/xt94d12b.asp

Now think about this: What's harder? Keeping a data center running 24x7
or coding a Hidden Markov chain algorithm that has to run in real time
to get its job done.

The answer is dependent on the personality and background of the
people involved. Both are hard, both are important (to different
organizations). To talk about either one being "more necessary" is
foolishness. A certain type of person would hate one of those jobs and
love the other and the reverse will also be true.  We need all of it.

> Scripting with all the tools available for use can handle _very_
> complex tasks and often more efficiently than specialized compiled
> programs.
No argument here, lots of the software used in genetic research today is 
in Perl.   Just recognize that the efficiency is saved in development
time, not "run time".

> > > (And yes, I do consider writing an interpreted script as scripting
> > > and writing a compiled program as programming.) 

> > Well, I'm glad we agree about that. I think. It does make your whole
> > set of responses kind of moot, though.

> No, the terminology to describe a scripted program is not the issue  .
> Your comment that scripting is not programming is at the heart of    .
> this                                                                 .

Somebody is hallucinating again.  Never said that.  show me the quote
or shut up.  I said that the original question should be called 
a scripting question.


-- 
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.