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Building a Programmer's Rosetta Stone

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the still-waiting-for-programmer's-tower-of-babel dept.

Did you ever run into the problem where you knew how to do something in one programming language, but really needed to do it in another? That's what Rosetta Code is all about. A variety of programming tasks are solved using as many languages as possible. You can examine existing tasks, or create your own.

4 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Usage by mgiuca · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not sure the right idea is to "know how to do something" in a particular language. If programmers are encouraged to learn algorithms specific to a particular language, how will they ever adapt once their pet language sinks? (By using an algorithm repository to re-learn rote code?)

    At any rate, I think this site has already encountered a problem which is only going to escalate as it grows: code isn't cross-indexed properly at all. For example, there are many "programming tasks" with solutions in C, but there is nothing on the C page. I think this problem stems from the fact they used MediaWiki.

    MediaWiki's great for something like... well, Wikipedia. But it doesn't support a cross-referenced database like this. The wiki concept is good for this site, but the server needs to be running some software designed better to the task.

  2. Re:No Fair! by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Informative

    I would be happy to see other types of programming represented in Rosetta Code. I only included what I already knew. Rosetta Code should be about many things I don't already know. Once the server's no longer slashdotted, stop by blog.rosettacode.org, and I'll make a point to bring up how to add your own programming tasks. (Really, you just have to add a template to the top of of the page. But there are some guidelines.)

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    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  3. Re:Pointless, don't bother! by JoshJ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Right now it may be "pointless" for someone looking at it. It is certainly not "pointless" for contributing to it. Posting it to /. , technocrat, and similar means that it will get exposed to a lot of potential contributors.

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    Care about privacy? Read this!
  4. Re:No Fair! by frakir · · Score: 5, Funny

    I program in Malbolge, you insensitive clod!
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge_programming_ language

    I hope next windows ver will be coded in Malbolge and open source.