RE: Fruit basket program alternatives for Learnability
- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 22:41:01 -0700
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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