With the empty parentheses I wouldn’t think it expects anything in return.
You can put whatever you want in the parenthesis… They are just there to indicate it is a function I am referring to. Perl is remarkably lax about parenthesis, actually, but they can clarify things (for the interpreter too, sometimes :)).
In python, eval(any python expression) allows you to build up expressions in a string at run time, then run it. Exec is similar except that you give it a statement, not an expression. So rather than, for example, having your program branch based on some parameter or condition, you can have your program write the code you want to execute based on some condition.
drop, the guy who developed python did it because he wanted didn’t like a lot of the perl features. So if you think perl is interesting, definitely check out python.
I think the reason Python hasn’t caught on is that it is too inflexible, much like Tcl. While I can write properly formatted and commented code in Perl, using strict, I don’t have to.
The other thing that annoys me about Python is that it also forces me to be verbose. Yes, sometimes that can be a good thing, but I’d rather add verboseness on my own later when/if I decide to give it out or use it regularly.
How many programmers do you know that choose efficiency over sloth?
neuroman, a great programmer always strives for an elegant over kludgy solution. As such, poor syntactical methods subtract from elegance because they cause a deviation from thinking about the code…that said, I’ve never met a programmer who could spell worth a spit, but at least they misspelled in a consistant manner throughout. 
Actually, I always thought it was because programmers were paid by the hour.
And was that intended as a joke? 
Well I’m hurt. I’ve always taken care in my spelling - and the same goes for my professors as well. It just saves time in the long run. misspelling cdr as car, for example, no matter how consistently you did it, will really screw you up come debugging time.
Oooh, a geeky “list your programming languages” thread! I’m in… I’ll admit I’m not really an expert per se in any of these, and a few of these I’d really have to refresh my memory to do anything with them again.
Actual Languages:
Basic (TRaSh-80, GW, QBasic variants… does that awful Visual Basic stuff in Excel count?)
Pascal (Old crappy IBM mainframes, DEC, and Turbo)
C (on DEC, Borland’s PC compiler, Ultrix & HP-UX)
Fortran (Again on old IBM mainframes, interfacing with SQL–nasty)
VAX Assembly
Prolog (some cheapy PC version)
Progress (character and GUI)
Scripting “Languages”:
Javascript
Cold Fusion
ASP
Webspeed
VAX DCL
Unix scripts
DOS batch files
Odds and Ends:
HTML
PCL
MSSQL
Proprietary languages (Cleo A+, EDI translation scripts, and a very weird handheld scanner language)
And I’m probably forgetting a couple… FTR, I just turned 26 today, and I am a decent speller.
Anyway, character Progress is my main focus and cash cow right now, though I’m sure I could be making more elsewhere. It is, in general, a very nice language–the best way to describe it is “Oracle-like”, though I’ve never touched any Oracle databases. The downside is that everybody says, “Progress? What’s that?”
Oooh. Forgot to include SQL. And didn’t include Batch files in DOS because getting them to do anything remotely programish was a pain in the ass. The most I was able to do with those was menus, or branching based on output from shell calls.
Yes, but I had to rename a bunch of files the other day and, thanks to a file with the info for the new names, Norton’s antedilluvian Editor, and MS-DOS’s batch language I did it quickly and easily.
Speaking of the Norton Editor, is there a more recent editor that, when doing a search and replace, sees [ALT]10 (Return) as one of the characters it’s to look for instead of as a command? It’s really handy when I have to take a list from a word processor and turn it into a data file. All of the returns turn into quote-return-quotes instantly.
My instant thought was to do a “tr”. But that’s unix…
I’ve got old C programs from college that I use to blow through text files character by character, and I’ll use those as patterns on rare occasions for special work that’s a little too cumbersome for an editor.
As well as a couple of inhouse (read “shitty”) languages:
Basic
Pascal
C (my favourite)
C++
Cobol (Yuk)
Assembly/Debug (extra fun)
Rexx (for OS/2)
JCL - OK, it’s not really a language, but I thought it might explain my occasional(?!) insanity
Java
I have to say that I don’t agree with the idea that it doesn’t matter how fast the program is, because modern computers are fast enough. There is never enough speed, and wouldn’t you rather have your software run twice as fast, rather than having to upgrade to a new (faster) computer?
HenrySpencer
I used to edit a computer club newsletter and would get files from all sorts of word processors, including completely alien systems. I used SNOBOL4 to strip out the oddball characters so I had a clean ASCII file. I have no idea how it works–it was a demo that came with the software (I never had a NEED to learn it, so I didn’t).
Well, you folks have shamed me into the '90s and I’m teaching myself VB. I bought it when it first came out but never had a need… Anyway, Version 1 does not live that happily with Win 98, so I should probably upgrade.
Of course! But is twice as fast enough faster to make up for increased development time? Maybe for the stuff you PROFESSIONALS do, where you are programming large systems for many users and speed becomes important, but my stuff is used by a few people who can’t type (limiting input speed) and who will not notice if it takes one or two hundredths of a second to run the command.
As for speed of my work computer, I do Autocad mostly and my computer is fast enough. I really mean that, for now. I’ve worked in CAD since Apple II days, so I know how nice incremental speed increases can be, but my computer is actually fast enough for what I do. If I did 3D work or used larger files I might start lusting after something faster, but I’m actually, unbelievably, satisfied with my current systems for what I do.
Depends on what the program is for. If it’s a one-time shot and would take 1 hour coding time to make the program run 1/2 hour faster… Know what I mean? Optimizing my time is sometimes more important than optimizing the computer’s processing time, other times it’s not.
Bah. If you had had Cygwin installed, you could have done it all in bash…
Vi Improved and Emacs, I think, work under Windows.
dropzone and mrblue92 - I agree. Time is a big factor in deciding what to use.
I was really thinking of people/companies who write large applications that they sell - you’d think they’d put more effort into making them run faster, rather than choosing a deadly slow interpreted language or something. For larger projects, most of the development time is spent before a line is even coded, so if the coding takes three times as much time, it might only add 20-50% to the overall development time. (Yeah, I know, I’m stealing this from ‘The Art of Assembly Language’, but I’ve gotta convince myself I’m not only using low level languages cause I’m a nut ;)).
HenrySpencer
Jeeze, assembler is a big enough headache on my 64k CoCo. On bigger computer with a fancier OS I can’t imagine it. I have nothing but admiration for folks who still program in assembler.
If you’re not writing operating systems, compilers, or extremely time critical stuff, I wouldn’t call you a “nut”, but, well, the word “sadist” does pop into my head… 