It makes me sad to hear Perl programming called "scripting". "Stop saying script" is a common refrain of mine. I gave a lightning talk about this at OSCON 2007, and a few hours later, Larry Wall, Perl's creator, gave his State Of The Onion in the same room, and reviewed my lightning talk like so:

_   /|
'o.O'
=(___)=
U    ack --thpppt!

Well, if you're gonna get dissed, might as well be by Larry, right? To read why he disagrees with me, see his just-published transcription of the State Of The Onion. I agree with his points, and yet, my core concerns about "scripting" being seen as not really programming still stand. How to combine the two?