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Scripting utility suggestions?

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mouser:
i'll raise you this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck

"Brainfuck is a computer programming language noted for its extreme minimalism. It was designed to challenge and amuse programmers.."

Edvard:
Personally, I am quite respectful of the art that 'real' programmers are able to pull off, despite the "power" of the latest scripting languages. I remember when I was a wee little buck pounding out BASIC code on apple ][e's and TRS-80's and Commodore.... you get the idea... I thought I was quite the little programmer (do you remember PEEK and POKE?... READ/DATA loops?? Well DO YOU?!?) 
I ventured into machine code when I hand-coded shape tables for a couple of games I wrote for the apple ][e because the shape table editor we all *ahem* 'shared' was commercial software. (the computer lab teacher busted all of us who had a copy, and then let me use his copy anyway...)
Needless to say, I was a tad shocked to see examples of Fortran and Cobol code and what could be done. Then came the rest of High School, long hair loud guitars and the pursuit of female companionship and computers seemed another universe away, though I never quite forgot...
Anyways, here I am again because you can't get away from these blinking boxes and I need to make things happen whether at work or home. So roll your eyes if you must, but I quite enjoy the wonderful scripting languages which let me automate mundane tasks and make pretty front ends for my favorite command-line utilities...
 (Which, of course are written by 'real' programmers with their 'real' languages.:))

BTW, I couldn't resist...
http://www.flatassembler.net
http://www.visualassembler.com
 

kfitting:
Yeah, I think it's cool how "easy" it is to code using scripting languages.  Makes it more accessible to the layperson or young people, to get them into coding.  Sort of like the electronics kits my dad talks about... back in the 50's and 60's electronics kits were almost as good quality as the stuff you could buy.  You could buy a kit, get a decent quality product, AND have the fun of burning your fingures with solder!  Scripting gives the same type of idea. 

I agree with mouser... use the tool that fits the job.  We have about 30 software guys working on the project at work and it amazes me at how much of an art coding really is.  I have a lot of respect for the guys who do more than just write fileexists(c:\genericfile).  All the higher levels and interfaces... blah blah.  To go one step further, there are guys like Steve Gibson of www.grc.com who writes in assembly language.  Yeah, that's nuts!  I know cause I had a class in assembly in college.  We didn' t write anything special, just moved bits around and toggled lights, but it gave an appreciation for coding at that level. 

I'm glad I don't have to worry about all the background stuff.  I'm also glad people like mouser, grc, etc are around to make apps that are clean, efficient, and coded correctly (bugs aside ;) 

Kevin

Edvard:
Brainf***k looked pretty funny until I saw this on thefreecountry.com's page of weird compilers.

However, before you write it off as a totally useless endeavour, you should be aware that the DeCSS algorithm (which decrypts the system used to protect DVDs) has been ported to this language.
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