One minor point: ‘This interactivity is usually missing in “compiled” languages’ <- I would say it’s true that this is missing from several mainstream compiled languages, (to their great detriment) but the majority of compiled languages do support it.
Edit: I guess the scare quotes around “compiled” might indicate it’s not meant to apply to most compiled languages, just the ones that are typically thought of as compiled?
That’s unlikely. What’s more likely is that humans don’t need to be 100% unambiguously precise in every form of communication, and instead can usually rely on other humans to know what they mean.
In addition to what burntsushi said, while it’s true that languages and their implementations are separable, it’s often not an accident that languages have their particular implementations. Bytecode interpreters and/or JIT compilers fit with Java, Python, etc in a way they just don’t for C. You can write them for C, but it’s typically less valuable.
Great post; this is one of my pet peeves.
One minor point: ‘This interactivity is usually missing in “compiled” languages’ <- I would say it’s true that this is missing from several mainstream compiled languages, (to their great detriment) but the majority of compiled languages do support it.
Edit: I guess the scare quotes around “compiled” might indicate it’s not meant to apply to most compiled languages, just the ones that are typically thought of as compiled?
Mine as well. Even the local safe languages guru tends to conflate programming languages with their implementations.
That’s unlikely. What’s more likely is that humans don’t need to be 100% unambiguously precise in every form of communication, and instead can usually rely on other humans to know what they mean.
In addition to what burntsushi said, while it’s true that languages and their implementations are separable, it’s often not an accident that languages have their particular implementations. Bytecode interpreters and/or JIT compilers fit with Java, Python, etc in a way they just don’t for C. You can write them for C, but it’s typically less valuable.