A bit tangential but here goes: I have some friends whose background is mostly algorithmic problems in competitive programming environments. I enjoy that kind o

A bit tangential but here goes: I have some friends whose background is mostly algorithmic problems in competitive programming environments. I enjoy that kind of practice occasionally, but for them, it's the 90% of code they've written, and they are just too good at that stuff. This means they know C++ best, as this is usually the language you use in those competitions. It's interesting to see the approach to scripting of these guys. While I tend to resort to shell pipelines and maybe throw in a short Lua program in-between, they write C++ code for everything, escaping to the shell for some stuff while using ordinary text files instead of piping, e.g. system("curl somesite >input.txt") and then fopen("input.txt", "r"). They write the glue between these calls, call the C compiler and run the binary. They know their C++ and know how to write it fast; as a result, they can get a valid script running about as fast as I can do the same using a shell pipeline. When I see this, I'm reminded how awesomely tools can be bent to do something they're not primarily designed for, when in the hands of someone skilled who knows them inside-out.