Yes that's right. It would be interesting a project that compares more programming languages for the things you said because it can be even more helpful, but it might not be as nice as a project that compare GUIS.
The site that could present it could have many sections like How to read a text file, how to write to a text file, how to read an xml file and write one, how to get a file content from the internet, how to sort an array, an associative array, an array of arrays, how to use regular expressions to find an email address (or something else)... so "how to create a simple GUI" can be just a part of that bigger project.
But I don't think it would be very easy to do something like that, because each language has its strong points, and there will probably be examples for some things in some languages and examples for something else in other languages, beeing very hard to make a comparison.
For example, it would be very simple to evaluate a piece of perl code from an external file and to execute it in the context of the current program, but it might not be possible or so easy in other strongly typed languages. Or in some languages and GUIS UTF-8 can be used while in others it is not possible at all.
It is even hard to compare a more advanced GUI, because some GUIS can't have some types of controls.
Octavian----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 8:41 AM Subject: RE: Fruit basket program alternatives for Learnability Well the point of the GUI example was to have an example for blind folks on which is easier to make GUI's in. It wasn't meant as an end all comparison of languages. For example there are ones out there on the web that do have a hello world that shows simple language structure. I guess the problem is figuring out what you want in a test program. The fruit basket has a single goal and that is GUI. If for example we decide we want to be able to build a list, sort the list, and copy that list into a hash do we let each language use the stuff that is in the language or do we make the person write everything. It was hard enough coming up with something everyone agreed on for the Fruit Basket I can't imagine coming up with a good test program for all languages that included, loops, Conditions, functions or methods, variables, structures or classes and the list goes on Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Veli-Pekka Tätilä Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 7:52 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Fruit basket program alternatives for Learnability Hi Ken, Good point about Lua et al not being very good Fruit Basket langs since native GUis are harder to build. Which reminds me, as it stands now, the Fruit Basket is more an Exercise in GUi layout and basic controls rather than showing off a particular programming language, just as you said below. Especially in libs whose list boxes maintain the strings directly, you don't necessarily demonstrate any kind of array or hash usage, text processing, functional programming constructs or closures all of which are common elements in the dynamically typed scripting languages, for instance. So could a more involved, and possibly less graphical, version of the Fruit Basket be developed which is more akin to language comparisons? What if there's already a C version of WIn32, should there also be a C version of GTK+ 2, for instance, since it is a different lib with C bindings? Hello Worlds as in Wikipedia don't tell much about a language: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/List_of_hello_world_programs However, I saw a benchmark which tries to demonstrate that with just in time compiling and dynamic optimizations Java doesn't lose much at all to C, contrary to popular belief. Not sure how feasible the results are but: http://www.osnews.com/story.php/5602/Nine-Language-Performance-Round-up-Benc hmarking-Math-and-File-IO//page1 Another interesting thing about that benchmark is the code. IT shows you basic arithmetic using integer and floating point types, file reading and writing and measuring the execution times of code. This can be a good intro to the field of the language i.e. basic data types, control structures, file I/O etc... which are things almost everyone wants to do sooner or later. Another set of language benchmarks would be this one, though not sure how the code is from a learnability point of view: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ -- With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming: http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila Ken Perry wrote:
The problem with Haskell, LUA, and Objective Caml which are all languages I have thought of doing one in are they do not have an easy way to access the Win32 environment or some way to create a dialog type application. I keep them on the list of programs I will write one in but haven't got around to it because it is almost as much work as the one I wrote in LISP. If someone writes them first more power to them but what
essentially these will end up
being is direct calls to Win32 and a bit of the programming languages structure and syntax. When I came up with the Fruit Basket idea I didn't think of this kind of language maybe we should come up with another test program that instead of displaying a graphical interface does a lot of work like looping, conditionals, functions or methods, Not really to do anything important but to show what the language is like when using it.
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