> I am most interested in your critique of interpreted languages in
general. Considering that many web-sites rely on various scripting
languages, what general weaknesses and vulnerabilities are you referring to?
Since I am not a software engineer, are there references that I can read to
learn about these obvious issues? I would rather be embarassed than be
ignorant. Please help me.
Easy. Web sites run a server (like Apache, maybe with others on top like
Zope). This is the "kernel" of your web server. It is virtually always
compiled, at least if subject to high load and reliability issues.
The top most layer is usually run-time configurable by scripts / interpreted
languages (as in Zope's case). This top level does most of the "visible"
work, but is usually only a tiny fraction of the whole server. I don't think
anybody in his right mind would even think about writing a high-demand web
server in Python - but some might choose to "glue" a few C modules together
to make one.
In the case of Zope, the compiled "Zope kernel" lets you do some scripted
configuration in order to build your dynamic interactive web site with a few
key strokes at the price of lack of flexibility. This is far from being a
programming language in the classical sense.
Horst
