Re: Would an *AdaScript* language be a good / bad idea?

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> I find this definition silly. All these languages can perfectly well
> be compiled,

Errr, I don't know about applescript of vbscript, but both Perl and
Python (and Tcl and ...) have operators that run code that has been
generated at runtime. So while it's possible to compile the code, you
can't (for example) eliminate the compiler from the runtime.

> and any general purpose programming language can be
> interpreted.

True.

> The difference between interpretetation and compilation is an
> implementation
> detail that has nothing whatever to do with the language.

Well, some people look at a language and say "there has never been a
compiled version of this", and from that describe it as "an interpreted
language", for example. Even tho it is theoretically possible to compile
the language, if nobody ever did, then it's not all that silly to say
"it's an interpreted language."

If you're talking about "AdaScript" as an untyped version of Ada, why
would you even consider such a thing unless the point was to make it
easier to interpret? I mean, there's already Ada compilers out there.
What would be the advantage of making a compiler for an Ada-like
language, but not as good?

> For the most part, the distinction between scripting languages and
> general
> purpose programming languages is bogus (and ends up being an excuse

Another definition often used is that scripting languages are "glue"
languages, and stand poorly on their own. You wouldn't write a video
driver or windowing system in Perl, nor an SQL engine, but you'd
certainly write the thing that glues the windowing system to the SQL
engine in Perl.  You *would* write the SQL engine and video driver in
Ada, but maybe not the rapidly-changing-don't-know-what-I-want part in
Ada. You wouldn't write something that renders HTML or reads the mouse
port in Javascript, but you would deal with the interactions between
those two.

Another feature of scripting languages is the almost casual use of
dynamically loaded code. It's not uncommon at all to calculate at run
time what executable code will be loaded, for example. (Think "java
applets" if you aren't familiar with programming other scripting
languages.) I think this is fairly difficult to do in Ada.

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
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