It seems unclear weather javascript is a scripting language, or a programming language. Can someone tell me exactly what it is. I learned just today that PHP is a scrpting language, so what about javascript?

Javascript would be considered a client side scripting language, but one could argue it was a programming language, just as one could for PHP. In my opinion scripting languages are still programming languages, they just arent compiled, but instead interperted.

Scripting languages are programming languages . . . what I call scripting is programming without compiling.

Scripting languages are a type of programming language. Compiled languages are another type.

Javascript is a dynamic object oriented scripting language primarily but not exclusivly used within the environment of a web browser.

JScript (microsoft's implementation of Javascript) is often used for writing server side "ASP" scripts. And the Javascript engines used by Mozilla etc are occasionally embedded into other things as an embedded scripting language.

Originally posted by gogocode
Javascript is a dynamic object oriented scripting language primarily but not exclusivly used within the environment of a web browser. I never know that Javascript is a hardcore OO language, my encounter with it is all in my browser environment, thats why :)

pardon my ignorance...

Originally posted by mfonda
Javascript would be considered a client side scripting language, but one could argue it was a programming language, just as one could for PHP. In my opinion scripting languages are still programming languages, they just arent compiled, but instead interperted.

Javascript can also be used at the server, not just the client.