Your assumption that simply anybody can script anything is flawed. You state that it's just some php and torquescript slapped together that interacts with a database. I can say the same thing about a car; it's nothing more than an engine bolted to a chassis that spins some wheels. But it takes an engineer to figure out what the optimal surface area for the bottom of a piston is for a particular quantity of gasoline being combusted.
Furthermore, I think the distinction you make between a programming language and a scripting language is unclear. I could code an engine in torquescript to interpret instructions from a completely fictional language.
EDIT:
Finally, I challenge you to justify why programming is harder than scripting because I don't agree at all. After you establish what exactly the difference between them is, of course. For what it's worth, Wikipedia says "A scripting language, script language or extension language is a programming language that allows some control of a single or many software application(s)." That suggests to me that a scripting language is a type of programming language and that scripting is programming. But of course, relying solely on Wikipedia to support any claim is not a wise course of action.
Every other site I checked suggested that, while there is a difference between a scripting language and a programming language, a scripting language is a programming language. The Lua site has the phrase "the programming language" right in the logo, which would indicate that it is a programming language and then on the about page it states "Lua is a powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language."
The statement you are trying to say is "Stop looking down at people like you're better than them." That is fair enough. The way you try and argue it is so unabashedly nonsensical, so ridiculously backward, so horribly and completely unrelated to what your original goal was that it destroys whatever point you were trying to make. What he did
is difficult and quite an achievement. It isn't as simple as a "digital mail order catalog for people too lazy to go to the department store and who don't mind paying inflated prices instead." Scripting
is the same thing as programming. It requires a degree of technical knowledge. Not everybody has that knowledge. The reason nobody as created a competing service is not because Ephialtes got to it first and there's no room for them. There's tons of things they could do with web services that interface with the game that would not duplicate RTB's functionality. Alternate chat programs, clan community systems, save file synchronization among multiple computers... The only thing we can reasonably from the fact that nobody has produced anything that relies on the same technology as RTB is that nobody in the community has demonstrated that they have the knowledge and experience to do it.
Ephi had to write engine modifications for TGE in C++ in order for RTB to operate. He posted them on Garage Games as public resources. I can't remember if Badspot added them or if Ephialtes just found a way around it. He can program (by your very silly definition).
You might have been somewhat convincing if you had tried to use a quote of Ephialtes saying something somewhat mean, for example (in reply to someone saying that they could handle scripting):
"Trust me, you can't. You're trying to access local variables that exist in another function and you're not even returning a value from that. You even have a function call outside of a function, it's just sitting in a package. You're also trying to use a variable as a function. You're also using the non-existant %c in your invalid function call. This is so badly written infact that the interpreter should have been shot for not giving syntax errors (if you even tried to run it)."
If you started by saying "By saying 'trust me, you can't" Ephialtes is indicating that he is displeased... blah blah blah. You might have been able to eventually build up some sort of connection between "putting a few mean words in an otherwise helpful post" and "being a raging egomaniac" that was plausible. I put that far beyond your abilities though.
Instead, you shot your whole argument to hell with a few stuffposts. Now you'll have to pretend to die
again so that you can register
another account on these forums so you can troll under a new alias. Good job.
