what is the difference between a programmer and a scripter?
1 Like
Functionally on Roblox, they refer to the same thing. In the broader industry though “program” refers to any sequence of instructions for a computer to follow, whereas “script” is a layer above that, where instructions are written in a scripting language (like Lua) which is then compiled for the computer to run.
Functionally far as I can tell, if you have to hit a “compile” button before you can run your code, it’s programming, if you don’t, it’s scripting.
16 Likes
Lua is a scripting language, which is a specific type of programming language. For Roblox, they mean the same thing.
4 Likes
As far as a description of a job/person
On roblox essentially mean the same thing, however people who call themselves programmers tend to have outside experience in the software industry whereas users who call themselves scripters tend to be limited to roblox and oftentimes lower on the skill tree.
But that’s just what I’ve noticed over the years and is nothing more than my opinion.
3 Likes
They are both pretty much the same thing. But a programmer is a pretty standard title. Programmers are defined as people who code computers test and fix that code. Since Lua is a object oriented scripting language many people who code in Lua refer to themselves as scripters. This is because most web coders for example JavaScript write one big block of code to make their program function. Scripters on the other hand make individual scripts that work together to make a program work. So really if you program on roblox you are considered a scripter.
Aura
2 Likes
Thanks my sis is a big fan of your game.
2 Likes
Ayy glad to hear! Hoping to release SHL4 for testing in the next few months so you’ll have to let me know what she thinks!
1 Like
That is great to here! Here user isdiamondheart6710
30charrrrrr
1 Like
A scripting language is an interpreted language while a programming language is a compiled language. There may be exceptions to this rule.
That doesn’t make sense, all code is compiled - you can’t not compile code in some form. Lua is transpiled into C++ and compiled. the difference between programmers and coders is not in what language they write code or at what level but their experience.
There’s no standard but a quick google search will reveal coders are considered less experienced programmers:
" Difference Between a Programmer , Coder , Developer , and Software Engineer. Anyone who can write some code is often referred to as a coder by the people outside of the tech industry. But, usually, coders are considered the least trained or experienced level of programmers ."
- 13 Jun 2017, Juwel Hasan.
1 Like
Do you have any evidence for this? The source for Lua 5.1 (which Luau is based in) is written in C and I see no signs of code that transpiles from Lua into C++.
2 Likes
Apolgoes, I’m incorrect, from robloxs blog:
The Roblox engine is written in a combination of C++ and Lua, with the code that performs computationally intensive operations written in optimized C++, while game logic and scripts are written in Lua, for ease of development. For this model to be effective, it requires that the transitions between Lua and C++ be as fast as possible, as any time spent in this no man’s land is essentially just wasted milliseconds.
Over the past couple of months, we’ve been rolling out various improvements to this part of the system. One part specifically—the actual invocation of C++ methods from Lua—was particularly interesting, as it led to considerable speed improvements and required digging around in the guts of Lua to understand how things worked under the hood.
We ended up modifying the Lua VM itself, but before we get to that, we need to lay some groundwork.
Compilers, VM, and bytecode
When Lua source code is compiled, it’s compiled into Lua bytecode, which the Lua VM then runs. Lua bytecode has around 35 instructions in total, for things like reading/writing tables, calling functions, performing binary operations, jumps and conditionals, and so on. The Lua VM is register-based, as opposed to being stack-based like many other VMs, so part of what the compiler does when it generates bytecode is determine which registers each instruction should use.
1 Like
Ah, That makes more sense but that’s still not the difference between coders and programmers.
1 Like