scripting languages : Java Glossary

Traditionally, scripting languages have had the ugliest syntaxes of any type of computer language. The ugliest surely has to be Windows/DOS command line. Other popular ones include Python, Bash, TCL/TK, Awk and Perl.

Because they are designed for one-shot command line use, the syntax of such languages tends to be loosey goosey (i.e. slovenly) with no type checking.

Usually scripting languages are interpreted (without even being preparsed) rather than compiled. Usually they have many platform and implementation dependencies. Usually they are a disgusting pile of seat-of-the-pants kludges piled on another. You might gather I don’t hold this branch of computer science in high regard.

I suggest avoiding these traditional scripting languages altogether and using ordinary Java instead for the same purpose. Use Jikes for compile speed. The advantages are:

• familiarity. Only one language to learn.
• Platform independence. Write once run anywhere.
• Structured ifs, object-oriented design, methods, parameters, types, sane variable names, threads, timers, etc. all the features that make writing complex programs easier.
• You can use a user-friendly GUI interface, (or a command line), to get direction from the user.
• You only have to specify each fact in only one place. Inheritance lets you build defaults on defaults.
• Fast execution of compiled code.
• If you are running Java apps, you don’t need to load a fresh JVM for every step. You can for example compile 1000 java programs in one go feeding them via directly to Java’s sun.tools.javac.Main.compile method.
• There are no artificial limits on the length of the command line, environment size, etc.
• You can use a customiser class that implements an interface to provide input to a program. That class can provide an arbitary amount of data, guaranteed to be already in the internal type expected. It can provide arrays, trees files or Collections. It can provide custom algorithms. You don’t have to invent a way to pack all this information on the command line, parse it and validate it. You don’t have to specify your data is some impossible to proof-read command-line format. You just fill in the stubs of a Java class to provide the data. It gives you infinite flexibility with no extra overhead or complexity.