Re: OT: programming languages

[Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>]

On Mon, 30 Jun 2014 17:47:34 -0400
Tony Baldwin <tonyb@myownsite.me> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 12:40:28PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > Joe wrote:
> > >On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 15:46:58 +0100
> > >Tom Furie <tom@furie.org.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > >>On Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 11:41:57PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>Programming belongs on any Linux list, especially since a lot of
> > >>>times you need to code to get things done. Dare you to configure
> > >>>dwm without coding.
> > >>However, there is a difference between discussing code in the
> > >>context of a solution to a problem and discussing coding and
> > >>langauges in general.
> > >>
> > >Indeed, but the name of the list is 'debian-user', not 'Debian':
> > >it's about us, not about the OS. A subject is off-topic here if it
> > >is [likely to be] of no concern to Debian users, not merely if it
> > >is not specific to the Debian operating system.
> > >
> > >Debian users might well be interested in better ways to administer
> > >and configure their Debian systems, even when such methods are not
> > >applicable *only* to Debian.
> > >
> > 
> > So please... get of your high horse.
> > 
> > Miles Fidelman
> 
> 
> So, are we going to discuss languages? Or just discussion the
> relevance of such discussion on the list?
> 
> Personally, I like tcl, bash, and ruby for scripting stuff (bash is a
> no-brainer of course), although I've only started to play with ruby
> recently.
> I really have no perl fu at all.
> A lot of stuff other folks do with perl, I end up doing with
> bash/sed/awk.
> I started playing with tcl about 7 or 8 years ago, and found it was
> really easy to learn and make useful stuff with fairly quickly.
> I don't understand why it isn't more popular (although it IS widely
> used, just not sexy for the hipster kids, who apparently do like ruby,
> and stuff like haskell, or whatever).
> 
> tony

If I need to do one-off parsing and move on to other things, I often
use awk. If the job's too complex for awk, pipe awk into sort into
another awk, etc. If it's still too quick, use Python. I do a lot of
template/token stuff with Python, including the diploma maker I use to
give all my students diplomas.

Yeah, Bash. I once made an entire playlist handler that would play
almost anything, including midi files, complete with going back and
forward 10 seconds or a minute, with a couple Bash scripts that
communicated with each other via a FIFO and kill commands to send each
other sigusr1 and sigusr2. I use that system several times a week.

Same thing with my system to digitize vinyl records. Pipes to send
info, and kill signals to tell each other the info's ready. My friends
think I'm insane, but it works well.

Oh, and here's what I use for CPU stress and temperature testing:

http://troubleshooters.com/codecorn/primenumbers/primenumbers.htm#_The_Bit_Array_Improvement

If that doesn't burn it up, nothing will.

I'm thinking of looking at tcl/tk for quickie GUI stuff. So far I've
used Lazarus for GUI. Works great, develops quick, but the executables
are huge.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance