title: The role of scripting languages in game Programming
body: <p>So I've been running into a debate at work about what the proper role of a scripting language is in game development.  As far as I can tell there are two schools of thought on this:</p>
  
  <p>1) The scripting language is powerful and full featured.  Large portions of game code are written in the language and code is only moved into C++ when performance dictates that it's necessary. This is usually something like Lua or Unrealscript.  </p>
  
  <p>2) This scripting language is extremely limited.  Almost all game code is in C++ and the language is only there to expose the underlying functionality to designers.</p>
  
  <p>My frustration comes from seeing approach number two frequently abused, with large systems implemented in a language that does not have the features that make that code maintainable.  </p>
  
  <p>So I started out supporting approach number one, but after talking to some designers I realized that many of them seem to prefer number two, and its mostly programmers who prefer one.</p>
  
  <p>So I'm still left wondering which approach is better.  Am I just seeing bad code and blaming the tool instead of the programmer, or do we need really need a more complex tool?  </p>