Occasionally I’ll see someone make a point of distinguishing coding in a particular language as scripting as opposed to programming. Often times the distinction is arbitrary. I’ve seen justifications for this distinction ranging from scripting languages not being as strict as programming languages, to scripting languages not being turing complete. Web languages in particular (HTML, javascript, PHP, etc) seem to have the stigma of being scripting languages. To this day, however, I have not seen a non-trivial definition of the difference (or perhaps just one that satisfies me).

This does not mean that I don’t think there is a difference; in my own mind I tend to draw a distinction. I do this, however, based on the practice of coding itself rather than the language. As an aside, before I go into detail, I’d like to mention that I’m not trying to pass my opinion off as a definition or absolute truth, just as my opinion. When I think of script, I think of HTML in particular. This isn’t because it isn’t Turing complete, or because it isn’t compiled, or because it is a “web” language. I make this distinction based on the tolerance for error in the practice of coding HTML. Go to any site and validate its source. Chances are you come up with multiple errors. This would not be tolerated in a language like C++. I’m not trying to say that HTML is inferior, when in fact it really wouldn’t be fair to compare it to the “traditional” programming languages.

Some languages are often referred to as scripting languages, but I feel are more like programming languages. PHP (and its web programming counter parts) for example, is often considered a scripting language. If you take into consideration my earlier assessment of HTML however, you will see why I do not consider it as such. If I forget to close a tag or if I use improper syntax in an HTML script there is a good chance that it will display just fine in a browser. In PHP on the other hand, if I forget a closing bracket or use incorrect syntax, my script will fail. Even if it is able to run, I will see unexpected behavior, and there is no attempt (and should not be) by the interpreter to correct these mistakes.

I don’t think it is the case that you can divide all of the languages in use today into scripting languages or programming languages. There is some gray area, and many languages have elements that are script like even though it would be difficult to consider them entirely a scripting language. Javascript and Xquery, in my mind are examples of this. As I mentioned earlier these are just my perceptions. I think that the difference between scripting and programming is completely arbitrary. I think one of the main reasons that such a distinction exists is simply so programmers can point out that writing HTML or PHP isn’t “real programming”. The difference really isn’t that important, which is why I don’t think it is necessary to create a formal definition.