I have a collection of ebooks in different formats (e.g pdf, lit, chm, and other), I would like to extract the first page of each book and have it in plain text. What would be the best language to do so? A portable language between Linux and XP would be a big plus. My prime candidates at the moments are Java and Ruby, mostly be...
I've decided to build a database tracking the credit card offers I get in the mail, and one confounding factor has been how to represent the offers. With minimum finance charges and variable rates and mimimum variable rates it gets a bit more complex than "10.99 percent". I've decided I need to construct a language to represent these thi...
This Cobol question really piqued my interest because of how much effort seemed to be involved in what seems like it would be a simple task. Some sloppy Python to remove file duplicates could be simply: print set(open('testfile.txt').read().split('\n')) How does removing duplicates in the same file structure as above in your langua...
I'd like to create a simple program that will block certain websites for the user under certain conditions (e.g. after 7:00pm if homework is due the next day). This would be just a programming exercise for myself/for self discipline, so it would not have to support passwords or any other security. It need only be very basic. What lang...
I am currently devising 3 database desktop applications for different users in a manufacturing company (one for the accounting department, sales department, production department). All applications have different functions but they should be able to access the data of the other department to reflect business transactions. What is the bes...
This is a little bit of fun. Can you devise the shortest program which compiles but does nothing but immediately crash when executed? Wherefore by "crash" we mean that the program stops with an error condition (a core dump for example). Is there a language that crashes faster (7 chars) than C using a gcc compiler? [I leave this answer f...
Does anybody have any tips for utilizing multiple languages at the same time? I use objective-c, c, perl, ruby, bash, ksh, rails, and other proprietary languages every day and am finding increasingly difficult to go back and forth between them on a daily basis. As a trivial example when switching between perl and ruby I constantly forg...
For someone who’s been happily programming in C# for quite some time now and planning to learn a new language I find the Python community more closely knit than many others. Personally dynamic typing puts me off, but I am fascinated by the way the Python community rallies around it. There are a lot of other things I expect I would mis...
The concern with the legacy of the SQL statements is a constant in my head. Especially when SCRUM is used, where the code has no owner, that is, all must be able to repair and maintain each piece. Optimizing SQL procedures usually means converting it into a set-based commands and using special operators. I need tips to keep the code work...
What kind of Applications are suited mostly for Ruby or Groovy ? Alternatively what problems are better addressed by programming languages like Ruby or Groovy ? ...
No, really. I've struggled to come up with a really great definition. Here's my take till now: A programming language is a formal language, containing syntax. Syntactical rules are used to form statements. Programming languages are used to create a set of instructions that a computer can understand. A collection of syntactical state...
Hello, I've already tried to develop languages using C and C++, but how can I create a interpreted language using C#? Thanks. PS: I want to build it to run in Windows Mobile devices. ...
The interpreter and dynamic compiler would be for testing/prototyping and when im done testing i use the static compiler. ...
One of the main characteristics of functional programming is the use of side-effectless functions. However, this can be done in an imperative language also. The same is true for recursion and lambda functions (for example C++0x). Therefore I wonder whether imperative programming languages are a superset of functional ones. ...
Me and my friend are in the first stages of creating a domain-specific language designed for game programming, for his thesis paper. The language will be fairly low-level, it will have a C-like syntax, optional garbage collection, and will be geared towards systems that have little memory or processing power (ie. Nintendo DS), but shoul...
I work for a small web design company, and learned everything I know on the job (my degree is in chemistry!). The other coder here taught me a fair bit of php, and I've had to pick up MySQL and a bit of javascript. I've also increased my knowledge of CSS. (HTML itself I already knew, really, along with a little CSS.) Now, I am the sort ...
Hi, Is there anyway to create a System DSN enter for MYSQL database (windows OS), with silent installation of MySQL ODBC Drivers programatically either through batch script or any other language? If drivers installation is not possible , atleast automatic DSN entery would be helpful. Thanks, ...
I'm trying to find a programming language I feel really comfortable learning and using for desktop/GUI application development. I realize it's unlikely that any language meets ALL of these criteria, but I'd like to find one that meets as many as possible. I've listed the following features ROUGHLY in order from most desirable/important t...
What's the advantage, for someone who is not a theoretical computer scientist, of learning a purely functional language like Haskell or Erlang instead of an "impure" language with a strong functional component, like Python or version 2 of the D programming language? My arguments are as follows: No paradigm is perfect. Languages that ...
I am just curious if there is a programming language which has state machines (similar to boost::statechart) as primary language construct. Analogies - c# has delegates where java uses the observer pattern and C has callbacks. Perl and python have built-in hashes while C++ and java needs a library. Update: This should be general prog...