Scripting langauges

I have always been working with the compiled and statically typed languages like C, C++, Java, C#. I used to avoid scripting languages and also used to hate little bit these scripting languages. But recently started exploring PHP and JavaScript and it changed my perception. Now I started loving these languages. Programming in the these languages needs little bit of different mind set. It takes some time to think in terms of loosely typed coding style.

There are, of course, pro and cons. Here is what I have started observing about the scripting languages -

- You dont need to think in terms of types of data. Most of the time this is very good but some time this is very problematic, especially when you are dealing with string and integer together. In such case you need to explicitly cast to other type. Here is one PHP code which confused me at first glance -

$var = "false";

if ($var) {

echo "This is true";

} else {

echo "This is false";

}

First time when I was dealing with similar code, I was expecting it to print "false". But this prints true. I was thinking, as this is loosely typed language, it will convert the string to boolean automatically. But later found that the string is converted to boolean on the basis of null check. There are other instances, which are potentially confusing. This proves that the these languages are not completely type-less. Sometime you are forced to think in terms of their type and and some complicated rules about the conversion from one type to another.

- You dont need to compile! good or bad?? As I am coming form the background of complied languages, I am feeling this is as a bad thing. The compiler catches lot of error at the compile time but here I have to wait for runtime even for common syntax errors.

- Scripting languages saves you from writing lot of code that you end up writing in languages like Java or C#. Particularly writing the interfaces and thinking what class will implement what interface. As the function name and variable name resolution happens at run time, you can pass around object of any class provided that object

has that particular method or variable with that.

- The scripting language makes your life easier for most frequent operation on string, array, pattern matching etc.