As mentioned in What’s the difference between Scripting and Programming Languages? article:
Basically, all scripting languages are programming languages. The theoretical difference between the two is that scripting languages do not require the compilation step and are rather interpreted. For example, normally, a C program needs to be compiled before running whereas normally, a scripting language like JavaScript or PHP need not be compiled.
Applications of Scripting Languages :
- To automate certain tasks in a program
- Extracting information from a data set
- Less code intensive as compared to traditional programming languages
Applications of Programming Languages :
- They typically run inside a parent program like scripts
- More compatible while integrating code with mathematical models
- Languages like JAVA can be compiled and then used on any platform
Also, as mentioned in another article Difference Between Scripting Language and Programming Language:
A scripting language generally sits behind some programming language. Scripting languages generally have less access to the computer’s native abilities since they only run on a subset of the programming language.Scripting languages are generally slower than programming languages.
More details from Quora’s post Why is Python called “a scripting language”?:
Just because something is interpreted doesn’t mean it’s a scripting language — after all, Python can be compiled. And standard Python compiles Python code into bytecode and interprets that, just like Java. But you never see Java called a “scripting language.” Also, there are C interpreters out there. If anyone cares to put in the effort, any language can be either compiled or interpreted.
Conclusion
Python is considered a scripting language because of a historical blur between scripting languages and general purpose programming languages. In fact, Python is not a scripting language, but a general purpose programming language that also works nicely as a scripting language.