5. Why Scripting?

The scripting languages like Python/Javascript/etc will give significant productivity boost in most cases. This is in comparision to compiled languages like C/C++/Java.

Some benifits of scripting languages:

Scripting allows us to express more thoughts in less code

Not just a line of script needs ~10x machine instructions to run compared to a line of C, but also, it is 10x relativly compact. Not convinced? try to implement a moderate size concept in C and Python.

Script engines manage automatically a lot of things like

Data Typing

Garbage memory collection, memory allocation printing exact line upon runtime error etc at zero cost for us. They are mode for our (developers) productivity.

In compiled language, you would modify code, build it and run it. This build state is time consuming and distracting. But in scripting language, there is no build stage, thus saving huge precious amount time. As said earlier, generally scripts uses dynamic typing (They are as strongly typed as C/C++, many of think, they are not typed. It is wrong.). So, you are writing very less code for same feature compared to statically typed languages like C/C++/Java. I feel, type safety of compiled languages harmed us more than it helped us. To be more objective, if you write a 1 line of C code and another line of Python code, typically, you would be expressing 10 to 100 times more powerfully in python, because, to translate 1 line of python into machine code, it takes 10 to 100 time more machine codes than C. This is widely observed.

Yes, I hear, they are not as fast as C/C++. And, don't forget, developers are also costly. Scripting languages provide function binding of C/C++. ie, we can call C++ function, in Python. Thus, the code that really needs to be optimized can be kept in C++, while rest of the code can be in Python. Cost of the developer is much more compared to cost of the CPU/RAM. We can compensate any slowness, if at all that matters by using a little faster CPU and little more CPU. That is very cheap. Give what your customers need. Majorly it is our quality product at competitive price is the need. For this, most of the time, scripting will help you (rather compiled language like C/C++/Java).

Growth of scripting languages is phenomenal. You can see it https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html and https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

I faced one issue with Python/Javascript: If you write code, it is available in plaint text to every one. ie, in compiled langauge, one can release the binary, thus keeping our souce code private. People say, we can send the byte code to customers, but I do not know much of it.

You want more technical analysis and there is document you can read it

Why Not C: by ESR