The paper discusses development of the theory of value distribution and growth of meromorphic functions, focusing on two basic notions: exceptional values and asymptotic values. Some historical context is given and contemporary achievements are presented. In particular, recent results concerning exceptional functions and asymptotic functions are considered.

Let E be a compact set in the complex plane, $g_E$ be the Green function of the unbounded component of ${ℂ}_{\infty }\setminus E$ with pole at infinity and $Mₙ\left(E\right)=sup\left(\right||P^{\text{'}}{\left|\right|}_E{)/(\left|\right|P\left|\right|}_E)$ where the supremum is taken over all polynomials ${P|}_E\not\equiv 0$ of degree at most n, and ${\left|\right|f\left|\right|}_E=sup\left|f\right(z\left)\right|:z\in E$. The paper deals with recent results concerning a connection between the smoothness of $g_E$ (existence, continuity, Hölder or Lipschitz continuity) and the growth of the sequence ${Mₙ\left(E\right)}_{n=1,2,...}$. Some additional conditions are given for special classes of sets.