Interpolation is just a fancy word for variable substitutioin in a string.

According to the free dictionary interpolate means:
2.
Perl does this very well, other language less so.  Less is a hybrid of the C# method for string formatting.  I find it pretty convenient when creating a lot of dynamic html to insert using that oh so hander innerHTML property.  Remember, innerHTML is usually the fastest way to add dynamic html.

function format(format) {
var params = arguments;
var toReturn = format;

for (var i = 0; i < params.length - 1; i++) {
var rString = '\\$\\{' + (i) + '\\}';
var regex = new RegExp(rString, "g");
toReturn = toReturn.replace(regex, params[i + 1]);
}

return toReturn;
}

Here's the original interpolation function that extended the string object.  I don't really think that extending builtin objects is a great idea unless there is no other way.

OK, so I've been using Python quite a bit lately and I've been enjoying it.  I've been getting stuff done with it too.  Python inter-operates with COM quite well and that saved me a lot of pain yesterday.  However, learning Python has caused me pain in other areas.

Yesterday I had to perform some maintenance in a C# ASP.NET app that I had written not too long ago.  Even though I use the CoolStorage.NET and some other nice time savers, it has become painful to write C# code.  It's just too verbose.

I used to marvel at people who claimed that you don't need an IDE to develop with Python.  I thought that was blasphemy as Visual Studio was the bee's knees in C# development.  However, I'm amazed at how much more I'm engaged in coding when I'm writing Python (or JavaScript).  You have to pay attention to what you're doing, no IDE is going to help you out.  However, this heightened state of concentration is actually fantastic for writing good code.

I use Notepad++ as my editor for Python (and JavaScript and HTML, etc) when I'm not using C# and Visual Studio.  I find its adequate for the job and it does have a function/method browser built in.  It also does HTML auto-complete and it can highlight a psp template file where I have Python, HTML and JavaScript all in one file.  It's also very stable, something that Visual Studio is not.

Visual Studio 2005 is flaky.  Sometimes all my Windows will rearrange or reset.  Other odd things happen and I find myself re configuring my layout from scratch.  Actually worse than scratch because every thing is helter skelter around. 

The worst part though is the amount of code I have to write to keep the compiler happy.  I know what I want to do and I know how I want to do it but I have to tell the compiler what I'm doing ahead of time so that it's happy.  Honestly, this is a great feature for a newbie or someone who really doesn't want to learn the language.  However, it becomes a burden after a while.  The C family of language has so many tokens (symbols like { [ ( ; , for while do foreach if) that your code becomes very noisy very fast.  Python is nice and clean which is something that I've come to appreciate.

I think I've found a better appreciation for Python (and JavaScript) because I've used C#/C++/Java.  For my everyday programming needs Python can handle everything I need to do.  However, at my current job getting Python into the mix might be a bit hard.  However, it might be worth it.  We spend so much of our day writing Programs that should just be nice and easy scripts.  We have so many programs and projects that could easily be one python file.  We do a lot of file transfer and validation. 

So yes, I'm feeling the pain of C#.  I just don't need/want that bug IDE and big language for what I need to do. 

Python does it faster, smaller and cleaner. 

Have you ever need to browse to several pages and print them?  It seems like it should be easy and it is with this little Python script.

I had an Intranet based system that displayed items in a browser.  The manager of the group I built this for asked for a hard copy of every item that fit a certain criteria.  So instead of them going to over 400 pages by hand I just created this simple script. 

It worked like a charm.

#start script

from win32com import client
import time

ie = client.Dispatch("InternetExplorer.Application")

def printPage(url):

    print "printing " + url
    ie.Navigate(url)

    while ie.Busy:
        time.sleep(1)
        print 'navigating...'

    print 'starting print job...'
    ie.ExecWB(6, 2)
    print 'executed print job.'
  
    while ie.Busy:
        time.sleep(1)
        print 'printing...'

printPage("http://google.com")
ie.Quit()

#end script

Sources:

http://www.darkcoding.net/software/printing-word-and-pdf-files-from-python/

http://www.grimsworld.org.uk/printie.html