Scripting, like all programming, empowers you to provide instructions to a computer, dictating its actions and their timing. Programs can be designed for manual user interaction (through GUI buttons or command prompts) or programmatic interaction with other programs, or a blend of both.
Consider the webpage displayed in your browser. The browser, a program you interact with manually, also interprets code (HTML and CSS) to determine the visual presentation. But where does scripting fit in? Let’s delve deeper.
Scripting vs. Coding: Understanding the Nuances
What distinguishes scripting from coding? Simply put, scripting is a specialized form of coding. Think of “coding” or “programming” as the overarching term for instructing a computer.
These instructions can accomplish a vast array of tasks: crafting web pages and applications, automating IoT devices, designing databases, or even developing entire operating systems.
When embarking on writing these instructions, a crucial decision involves selecting the appropriate programming language. Hundreds of computer languages exist, with new ones constantly emerging.
Different languages excel in different scenarios, whether it’s manipulating data, generating graphics, or creating tools to assist developers in writing code. Scripting languages represent a subset of these programming languages, each tailored for specific purposes.
A defining characteristic of scripts is that they offer instructions that are read and executed by another program during its runtime. Technically, script instructions are interpreted at runtime (i.e., when the code is executed).
Alt text: Code interpretation process, showing a computer interpreting code instructions at runtime.
Conversely, code in other programming languages is compiled before execution. This can be visualized as packaging the instructions, making them ready for use. While this ensures consistent behavior upon each run, modifications necessitate recompilation into a new package and redistribution.
While compilation is suitable in certain situations, the ability to modify instructions without recompilation can be advantageous. Scripts offer the flexibility to alter instructions each time a program runs.
(Note that the distinction between interpreted and compiled languages isn’t always absolute, but exploring this further would be a discussion for another time.)
Advantages of Scripting: Dynamic and Responsive Experiences
Since scripts provide instructions to other computer programs during runtime, they are ideally suited for creating dynamic experiences. Web development is a key area where scripting languages find significant application, enabling highly valued dynamic and responsive user experiences.
Imagine a basic webpage, such as an online retailer’s product page, comprised of text and images. A static version of this page could be created using HTML and CSS.
However, most online retailers manage hundreds or even thousands of products, each requiring a dedicated page. These pages need constant updates to reflect the latest availability and pricing information. Retailers often display other dynamic content, such as recently viewed products or the number of items in the user’s basket.
Creating every possible webpage permutation in advance using static HTML and CSS would be remarkably inefficient. Instead, static HTML and CSS can be combined with scripts that dynamically retrieve content each time a user loads the page. Scripts populate the webpage with relevant content based on browsing history and product database information.
Alt text: A visually engaging webpage showcasing dynamically updated product information, enhancing the user experience.
Scripting Language Examples: Powering the Web and Beyond
The following scripting languages are commonly used in web development to create dynamic user experiences (such as social media feeds, recommendations, and search results) and generate pages from templates (such as news and e-commerce sites).
As we’ll explore, web development frameworks have been developed for each, simplifying the process of building and maintaining experiences by offering tools and libraries that streamline common tasks (such as user authentication or database interactions).
JavaScript (JS): The King of Client-Side Scripting
JavaScript is a popular programming language primarily associated with client-side scripting. Client-side scripts execute within the user’s browser when viewing a webpage rather than on the server hosting the website.
JavaScript is used on the majority of modern websites, including social media platforms, news pages, and e-commerce sites. Common use cases include dynamically updating the page based on user input (e.g., updating a form based on previous answers), modifying the display when a user clicks a button, and providing animation. Numerous client-side JavaScript frameworks are available, including Vue, React, and Angular. More recently, JavaScript has expanded into server-side scripting through frameworks such as Node.
PHP: Server-Side Powerhouse
PHP (a recursive acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor) is widely used for server-side scripting, powering platforms like Facebook, Wikipedia, and WordPress.
Server-side scripts consist of instructions executed on the servers hosting a website when a user visits a particular page. For example, PHP scripts can be used to query a database to retrieve availability and pricing information for a specific product or fetch the five most recent blog posts. The script executes upon page request, dynamically populating it with the latest information without pre-generating the page.
Several PHP web frameworks are available, including Laravel and CodeIgniter. PHP also extends to other use cases, such as command-line scripting.
Alt text: The PHP logo, representing the widely-used server-side scripting language.
Python: Versatility and Simplicity
One of the most popular programming languages globally is Python. This scripting language boasts numerous applications, ranging from application and game development to data science and DevOps automation.
Python is a popular choice for back-end web development, where it retrieves data from databases and APIs, manipulating it for inclusion in responses to the client. Python server-side web frameworks include Django, a fully-featured framework commonly used for content-oriented sites such as Instagram and Dropbox, and Flask, a lightweight web framework popular in microservice architectures.
Perl: The Text Manipulation Expert
Perl excels as a language for writing text-manipulation scripts, encompassing regular expressions (regex), HTML parsing, JSON file manipulation, and log file data extraction. As a result, Perl is often used for sysadmin tasks, such as managing file systems, databases, and users.
Perl’s versatility in integrating backend services and its prevalence during the Internet’s early stages contributed to its past popularity for server-side web development.
Over the years, several Perl web frameworks have emerged, with Dancer and Mojolocious remaining the most actively developed. While Perl may not be the initial choice for new web projects, it remains a widely used scripting language encountered in older projects and other contexts.
Ruby: Elegance and Productivity
Like Python, Ruby is a general-purpose scripting language with a wide range of applications, spanning websites and web apps to desktop programs, data processing tools, and automated DevOps tasks.
Ruby’s popularity as a server-side scripting language has grown significantly thanks to the Ruby on Rails web framework, which powers platforms such as Airbnb, Kickstarter, and GitHub.
Wrapping Up: Scripting’s Broad Impact
Scripting can be seen as a subset of coding, with scripting languages constituting a specific family of programming languages. As we have seen, scripting is broadly implemented in web development to create dynamic, responsive experiences and enable pages to be generated from templates.
However, the application of scripting stretches far beyond websites. You’ll find scripting languages are used to create mobile and desktop apps, manipulate large data sets, automate deployments, and orchestrate machine learning utilities. In every instance, a script requires another program to run it.
Ultimately, as with any programming language, selecting the right scripting language for a project depends on several factors, including the specific use case, the existing ecosystem, and the experience of the developer and their team.
