Re: Let's face it, Perl *is* a scripting language

[TomDLux]

A script is a bit of code which is developed quickly to provide functionality which may have dynamic or frequently changing requirements. Aprogram is developed more slowly but runs quickly; the program satisfies requirements which change little or only slowly.

Fifteen years ago I wrote a script using a series of shell commands to determine how much space each user was occupying in the file system. Today I use Perl to process 500,000,000 records a day into Informix databases .... am I dealing with scripts or programs? After all, 30 years ago any computer, any language would have been challenged to keep up.

I wouldn't use Perl 5 to implement an operating system, I wouldn't advise using it to run a nucear power plant or an airplane or a rocket ship ( but some perverts are using MS OSes for that! ). On the other hand, just because someone is writing code in C doesn't mean their prgrams are important or good. ity just means it will take them a week to write something I can have ready in a day.