>>41Actually most of the time was spent dealing with quirks of Python's regex system, such as the fact that parens result in splitting of output into a tuple for some reason. Also, I'm really at the stage where if I want to do something I have to go to the docs and see if it exists, so all the string and regex functions took a fair bit of time. I could have done what the tablecat OP did and just looped through the string (and without writing in the bugs he did), but my point was that if you want to do that you might as well use C and be done faster.
If you look at C# code online, it will indeed be overengineered often, but that isn't my problem, just noobishness. As for scheme, lisp, etc. I looked into it but found that it doesn't really bring anything to the table that C# hasn't already got, for all of Paul Graham's grand pronouncements. The C# you're thinking of is years out of date. The modern version is largely suitable for functional programming, although of course macros are not possible (not really) in a compiled language. I'd tell you to take a look at it, but as I say I don't think it has a bright future with Microsoft going the way it is. My python efforts are essentially an attempt to dodge the cancerous idiocy of Java, which has essentially not evolved in 15 years.
C++ is another option I've been considering. I don't like it much, but there's a lot of useful stuff in it, like opencv and ros.