If you are often part of internet conversations where people talk about coding and scripting, you must be living with confusion. You wonder what the difference is between scripting and coding. People on the internet like to throw the two terms as though they are the same. In some ways, yes, there is nothing wrong with using them interchangeably. However, when you talk about their definitions, there are some differences. In simple terms, coding and scripting are two different processes even though they might appear identical to people who are not programmers.
Scripting vs. Coding
The first thing you have to know is that programming and coding will be used as synonyms throughout the post. The main difference that you have to know is that a code can be executed alone to give you a logical outcome. Coding is an umbrella term like digital marketing. Scripting is just a small part of this umbrella term. You can take the example of digital marketing and internet marketing. While these two terms are used interchangeably as well, you know that digital marketing is a broad term whereas internet marketing refers to marketing on the internet only. You would not call marketing with LED signs in your store internet marketing, but it is digital marketing.
There is another way to look at the two terms and understand their differences. A code lets you create a program. On the other hand, a script lets you control the program that you created with coding. Thousands of lines of code is compiled to run a program. On the other hand, a script runs within that program to control a certain aspect of it. More precisely, you might want to automate a particular process within the program with the help of scripting. In short, scripting is the next step after coding.
It is also important to note here that coding is much more complex and difficult than scripting. You require a lot less coding when you create scripts for your programs. You will use different types of languages for coding and scripting. A commonly known scripting language is JavaScript, also written shortly as JS. On the other hand, the famous programming or coding languages include names like HTML, C, etc. At this point, you should also know that a code needs to be compiled. Contrary to that, a script is not compiled but interpreted. These are strict programming terms and you have to understand their differences.
Bottom Line
You should be able to spot the difference between the two right now. It is okay to use the terms interchangeably when talking generally with people. However, you have to be careful when using those terms when you are conversing with developers, coders, programmers, etc. At least, it should be clear to you at this point that these are not the same things. To make things easy, scripting is like a name of a particular type of fruit. Scripting is one of the many categories within that fruit. All scripting can be called coding but all coding cannot be called scripting
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