Re:Not a language, really (Score 5, Insightful)

Are you kidding me? Are you really *(*$@#ing, Grade A kidding me?

Python/Perl/Ruby require interpreters. Scheme and Lisp are frequently run within interpreters. "stand-alone executable" require HARDWARE. Any programming system requires *something* underneath it unless you are programming in a purely physical system like an automated abacus with mechanical gears that buzz and whirr.

Programming languages are defined by their Turing completeness: can they do things repeatedly, can they assign values to memory locations and perform some basic set of operations (nand works nicely), can they make decisions. Everything else is fluff.

Perl has "fluff" that handles regular expressions very well.

Python (and others) have "fluff" that make networking and database ops easy.

R has "fluff" that makes it terribly convenient to work with data.

Matlab has "fluff" that makes it very easy to do numerical methods programming.

Mathematica has "fluff" that makes it very easy to do symbolic computation.

Each and every one of these, and most well-known languages, with all their warts and beauty marks are Turing complete and are deserving of the term "programming language".

Regards,
Mark