I'd expect part of the definition of "scripting language" to include being interpreted. He addresses this as an extra:

  compile time with -O3 is roughly the same as Python VM startup and has to be done only once

It's a non-scripting language hassle to have to compile. Of course, you just need a little front-end to automatically compile if needed for you. IIRC Perl actually does this.

But I like his emphasis on large standard libraries, enabling compact scripts, esp string processing, and memory managed. WHy couldn't you do this trick with C (i.e. compile & run)? It's mainly libraries, though memory management isn't natural. Actually, I could believe that many scripting languages actually started like that, but shifted to their own syntax asap.

This trick can also be done with java, by keeping a server in the background to run it to cheat the VM startup tax (and auto-compiling as needed). Java verbosity is a problem, but you can write C-like code in Java. The biggest problem is the detail of Java libraries - they give you a lot of control, but a scripting language should give you less control, in return for quick functionality (like unix `sort`).