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Concept
Dynamic programming language
Summary
In computer science, a dynamic programming language is a class of high-level programming languages, which at runtime execute many common programming behaviours that static programming languages perform during compilation. These behaviors could include an extension of the program, by adding new code, by extending objects and definitions, or by modifying the type system. Although similar behaviors can be emulated in nearly any language, with varying degrees of difficulty, complexity and performance costs, dynamic languages provide direct tools to make use of them. Many of these features were first implemented as native features in the Lisp programming language.
Most dynamic languages are also dynamically typed, but not all are. Dynamic languages are frequently (but not always) referred to as scripting languages, although that term in its narrowest sense refers to languages specific to a given run-time environment.
Some dynamic languages offer an eval function. This function takes a string or abstract syntax tree containing code in the language and executes it. If this code stands for an expression, the resulting value is returned. Erik Meijer and Peter Drayton distinguish the runtime code generation offered by eval from the dynamic loading offered by shared libraries, and warn that in many cases eval is used merely to implement higher-order functions (by passing functions as strings) or deserialization.
A type or object system can typically be modified during runtime in a dynamic language. This can mean generating new objects from a runtime definition or based on mixins of existing types or objects. This can also refer to changing the inheritance or type tree, and thus altering the way that existing types behave (especially with respect to the invocation of methods).
As a lot of dynamic languages come with a dynamic type system, runtime inference of types based on values for internal interpretation marks a common task. As value types may change throughout interpretation, it is regularly used upon performing atomic operations.
Official source
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