The scripting language is basically a language where instructions are written for a run time environment. They do not require the compilation step and are rather interpreted. It brings new functions to applications and glue complex system together. A scripting language is a programming language designed for integrating and communicating with other programming languages.
Here we have Scripting Language which is used for DevOps Engineers:
1. Python
Python is amongst the top scripting languages which is used for high level programming. It was first released in the year 1991 by Guido van Rossum. It is a great choice these days for beginners up to professionals. It has topped the charts in recent years over other languages and is widely used by programmers nowadays. Even Google has made Python one of its primary programming languages. Python has undergone a drastic change since its release, as many add-on features are introduced. Python is used for web development, data science, creating software prototypes, and various other things. It is available under Python Software Foundation License.
Features:
Easy to Read, Learn and Write
As it’s simple language, it improve productivity
Interpreted Language
Dynamically Typed
Free and Open-Source
Vast Libraries Support
Portability – write once and run it anywhere
Python Advantages
Easy to Read, Lean and Write
Improved Productivity
Interpreted Language
Dynamically Types.
Free and Open-Source
Vast Libraries Support
Compatible with Most Systems and Architectures
Data Science and AI - Preferred Language
Python Disadvantages
Slow Speed
Not Memory Efficient
Weak in Mobile Computing
Database Access
Runtime Errors
Difficult in Using Other Languages
2. Bash
BASH is short for AKA Bourne-again Shell and it is a superset of Shell scripting. It is basically a command language which is available in open source and written by Brian Fox in the year 1989. It is mainly used by software developers and system admins to automate most of the tasks. It can read scripts and the most commonly used Unix shell. Bash supports Linux, Windows, and Mac OS.
Features:
Easy to use
To automate the repetitive conducted operations
It saves time
To run sequence of instructions as only one command
Quick start, and interactive debugging.
It can be implemented in any Unix-like operating-system without any modifications
Bash shell Advantages
Simple and easy to master
Convenient to learn and use
Common commands are also easy to remember
Interpreted language, no need to compile before running
Handle complex problems quickly and easily
Portable (It can be executed in any Unix-like operating systems without any modifications)
Bash shell Disadvantages
Weakly typed languages
Slow execution speed compared to any programming languages
I/O performance is not high
A new process launched for almost every shell command executed
low efficiency
3. Go language
Go scripting language belongs to the Internet giant Google. This scripting language is written by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson and it was released in the year 2009. It supports Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Windows, Plan 9, DragonFly BSD and Solaris operating systems. It is available in open source.
Features:
Golang has a standard library
Golang is well known for its memory management capabilities
Golang comes with inbuilt powerful testing tools
It based on functions which makes it simple, easy and fast to learn
It is used for different platforms (Windows, Linux/Unix, BSD versions and mobile devices)
Go lang has efficient concurrency, like C,C++, Java
GoLang Advantages
Easy to Learn
Ease of coding
In-built Security
Standard Library
Lightweight routines
Well known for memory management capabilities.
Much faster compared to Python
GoLang Disadvantages
Young Language, it is still developing
Not good language for building iOS applications
No support for inheritance
Limited libraries to work
No support to OOP
No GUI library
Narrow community support
Runtime safety is not that good
Error handling isn't perfect.
4. Ruby
Ruby is amongst one of the best programming languages but it is also a scripting language which is written by Yukihiro Matsumoto in the year 1995. Ruby supports cross platforms and it is available under GPL and BSD license. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including functional, object-oriented, and imperative.
Features:
Easy to learn and master
There are so many libraries and frameworks available
Can start learning Ruby on rails, and make web applications much faster and easily
Ruby is open source and is freely available on the web, but it is subject to license
Ruby is very much scalable and easily maintainable
Ruby Advantages
Big Number of helpful tools and libraries
Huge and active community.
Works on Many Platforms
High level of abstraction and substantive approach to the implementation of algorithms
Easily integrates high performance database servers.
Simple and clean syntax, easy to learn, easy to maintain
Additional security features
Built in debugger
Ruby Disadvantages
Shortage of flexibility
Continuous evolvement
Wrong decision may costs high
Less stronger Runtime speed and performance
Difficult to deploy
5. Groovy
Groovy can be used as a scripting language and it is also consider as a top scripting languages for DevOps professionals. It was designed by James Strachan and developed by Guillaume Laforge, Jochen Theodorou, Paul King and Cedric Champeau. It was first released in the year 2003 and available under Apache license. It supports Java platform.
Features:
Static and dynamic typing
Groovy is supported by wide range of frameworks
Jenkins Pipeline uses the power of Groovy
Support for unit testing
It can easily integrate with your existing interface.
Concise, brief, direct syntax
Relatively short learning curve
Easy to learn for Java developers
Native support for regular expressions/syntax/associative arrays
Groovy Advantages
Groovy blends different programming paradigms elegantly.
Support from the business community – save time and efforts
Its syntax is readable, concise & expressive
It comes with batteries included with advanced APIs to simplify common programming tasks, making developers more productive.
Groovy can call all powerful Java libraries
Reusable and assignable pieces of code is present in groovy.
Maps, arrays, ranges, and regular expressions can be literally declared.
It possesses efficient object navigation.
Groovy Disadvantages
At present, there is only the implementation of JVM, which can only be run on a machine with JVM.
It’s still considered as the “slow” JVM language.
Knowledge of Java is Required.
It may need lots of memory
JVM and Groovy script start time is slow which limits OS-level scripting
6. Perl
PERL (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) is a high-level, interpreted, dynamic programming and scripting language written by Larry Wall and first released in the year 1987. It was specially designed for text editing. But these days broadly used for various purposes which includes system administration, network programming, web development, etc. Perl is quite popular for extracting data and generating reports.
Features?
Easy to learn Perl is extremely portable
Provides supports for cross platform
It is free and open Source
It can embed in web servers and database servers
Makes system administration task easy
Perl takes the best features from other languages, like C, sed, awk, and sh etc.
It can extract data and generate reports
PERL Advantages
Easy to learn as it is similar like C, C++
Perl Provides supports for cross-platform and it is compatible with mark-up languages like HTML, XML etc.
It is very efficient in text-manipulation i.e. Regular Expression. It also provides the socket capability.
PERL is an embeddable language thus, it can be embed in web servers and database servers easily.
PERL supports more than 25000 open source modules on CPAN
Perl has may powerful extensions to the standard library.
PERL Disadvantages
As scripting, it is slower for a lot of tasks – needs to be interpreted each time when any changes are made.
Argument Handling is poor
Not Portable
No Interpretor Shell
Ugly Libraries
Hard to fix bugs
7. Microsoft PowerShell
Microsoft powershell or windows powershell is belongs to Microsoft and an open-source (yes you read it correct – opensource) automation framework and scripting language. It provides a command-line shell and scripting language which is integrated with the .Net framework and it can be embedded with other applications. If you have application infrastructure with windows than powershell is must for you. This scripting language is designed for system admin.
Features?
Easy to understand and use
Automate systems repetitive tasks
Countless possiblites of querying and reporting
It is more extensible via cmdlets and plugins
It supports .NET Objects and Forms
It runs on single threads and hence it can invoke any .Net libraries
Concept of background jobs
Powershell is interactive
Powershell Advantages
Powershell is an object-based which allows you to manipulate the output easily
Powershell is easy to learn and implement
You can even run legacy DOS commands
You can also run .Net code in PowerShell
Commonly used for automating the management of systems
It is also used to build, test, and deploy solutions, often in CI/CD environments.
Built-in support for common data formats like CSV, JSON, and XML
Powershell Disadvantages
Sometime it can be slow for large inputs or outputs
Powershell is not considered as the very best for writing GUI (graphical interface programs)
Powershell is interpreted so you aren’t going to use it for writing system drivers or OS components and such even if it is fast enough.
8. JAVAScript
JavaScript is the world’s most popular and widely used programming and client-side scripting language. It was developed as LiveScript by “Netscape” in the 1990s and renamed to JavaScript in the year 1995, and became an ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association) standard in 1997. It is an object-oriented language, and it has some commonalities in syntax to Java programming language. But, it’s not associated with Java in either way. JavaScipts add and enhance interactivity and dynamic consequences to the web pages by manipulating the content returned from a web server. If you are good at it then you can develop games, animated 2D and 3D graphics, comprehensive database-driven apps, and much more.
Features?
Easy to learn compared to other popular languages
All popular web browsers support JavaScript
JavaScript is very fast
JavaScript can be inserted into any web page
Being client-side reduces the demand on the website server
Gives the ability to create rich interfaces
JAVAScript Advantages
Easy to learn
Platform independent
Most of the JAVAScript task runs without contacting to the server
Give a Rich Interface to your application
JAVAScript Disadvantages
There are no multithreading or multiprocessing capabilities.
JavaScript does not allow the reading or writing of files. This has been kept for security reasons.
It can not be used for networking applications because there is no such support available
Code use to be always visible to client end, even though it is minified
9. Terraform
Terraform is developed by Hashicorp and it is an open-source tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently, written in go programming language. Professionals use various tools to automate the provisioning of software. Terraform works on the same principle, infrastructure as code, but focusses on the automation of the infrastructure itself. It can provision any application written in any language to any infrastructure.
Features?
Open-source
Popular DevOps tool
Super portability – one tool, one language for describing infrastructure of any cloud
It uses a custom language known as HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language).
It was designed to compromise the human-readable and the machine-friendly languages.
Terraform Advantages
Terraform made cloud resources available as code. Just select the suitable provider for the cloud and it will do the job.
Templating is possible to make the Terraform templates reusable.
To make the templates generic – variables can be created so that they can be reused for different resources or environments.
Deploy infrastructure quickly & reliably
Terraform Disadvantages
It doesn’t have a GUI.
No auto-rollback feature upon failure.
Tracking and visibility can be improved as using Terraform plan to find out what is already created via Terraform by using Terraform state is a bit harder.
Documentation, specifically examples are often complex and do not explain things very well
10. Ansible
Ansible is known as configuration management and application deployment tool but it can also be used to write scripts. It belongs to Red-Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and written by its community members. Ansible uses playbook to describe automation jobs, and it uses very simple language like YAML (It’s a human-readable data serialization language & is commonly used for configuration files, but could be used in many applications where data is being stored) which is very easy for humans to understand, read and write.
Features?
Seamless deployment
Easy automation
Very helpful for system administrators
Popular DevOps tool
Ansible Advantages
Using Ansible is very Simple
Ansible uses playbooks which are written in YAML – which are easy to read and understand.
You do not need to install anything else on it for security or scaling purpose.
If used with full capabilities, it can orchestrate an entire application environment regardless of its deployment environment.
Since it does not require any other resources to be installed, it’s pretty efficient.
Ansible Disadvantages
UI is Lacking
Ansible has no nation of state
Limited Windows Support
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