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Building a Programmer's Rosetta Stone

Journal written by Short Circuit (52384) and posted by CmdrTaco on Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:09 AM
from the still-waiting-for-programmer's-tower-of-babel dept.
Programming IT Technology
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.
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Building a Programmer's Rosetta Stone 25 Comments More /

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  • No Fair! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Watson Ladd (955755) on Sunday January 21 2007, @11:16AM (#17702038)
    A lot of the tasks assume imperative programing, e.x. assigning values to an array. This should be about algorithms that we can all implement, not code fragments that assume a particular style of programing.

  • It may prove useful. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Z00L00K (682162) on Sunday January 21 2007, @11:22AM (#17702086) Homepage
    But as a seasoned programmer I also know that some tasks can't be ported. A more efficient method is to actually resolve the problems at link time since most object files doesn't really care about which language you use. Some tasks are better off in one language than in another and porting the "problem" may prove a herculean task ending up as the major time-consumer for a project.

    Of course there are also cases when you will need to port the solution to a different language. This may be the cause when the project specifications requires a specific language like Ada.

    As with all programming; your mileage may vary.

    • Re:It may prove useful. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arevos (659374) on Sunday January 21 2007, @11:38AM (#17702198) Homepage

      But as a seasoned programmer I also know that some tasks can't be ported. A more efficient method is to actually resolve the problems at link time since most object files doesn't really care about which language you use.
      If you look at the programming tasks [rosettacode.org] the website attempts to translate, you'll notice that they are extremely basic and generic. I don't think the aim of the website is to translate some complex library into another language; rather to provide a learning resource where programmers can see how to map simple tasks from one language to another, which presumably will help them better understand a new language. Remember that the original Rosetta stone was used for a similar purpose.

      This site could be useful, but MediaWiki doesn't seem the best tool to use, and the content so far is rather sparse. I'm uncertain whether this will prove a success; it's an interesting concept, but many interesting concepts have fallen by the wayside.

        • Re:It may prove useful. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by arevos (659374) on Sunday January 21 2007, @05:36PM (#17704926) Homepage

          Just out of curiosity, why not? And what would you suggest instead?
          A Wiki is essentially just an editable website. It must be manually ordered; tables of contents put in, pages linked to other pages, and so forth. This is find for data that has a very general structure, such as an encyclopaedia or a manual of some kind. But the Rosetta Stone concept is highly structured, cross-referencing programming languages with programming problems, and it seems to me as if this cross-referencing would be better done automatically, rather than making several Wiki pages and maintaining them manually. The site concept would be better suited to some sort of customised CMS, or perhaps something designed from scratch.

  • Usage (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mgiuca (1040724) on Sunday January 21 2007, @11:24AM (#17702094)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Short Circuit (52384) *

      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?)

      Rosetta Code was largely inspired by a page on Wikipedia where the classic "Hello World" example was shown in a few hundred languages.

      Rosetta Code takes the concept behind Hello World, and spreads it to other tasks.

      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.

      Actually, this is (almost) intentional. I want people to be able to learn about the languages they're using. I've been filling in the pages as I've had the opportunity. (I'm a full time college student, and president of a student organization.) Check the page on GCC, for example. [rosettacode.org]

      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.

      I'm open t

    • Re:Usage (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cp.tar (871488) <cp.tar.bz2@gmail.com> on Sunday January 21 2007, @12:25PM (#17702524) Journal
      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?)

      But this kind of thing should be very good for someone learning a new language - you know how to do it in one language, now you're looking it up in another one... like learning the most common phrases first when learning a natural language.

      I hope this project will amount to something; it can be really useful.

  • if you like this... (Score:4, Informative)

    by taybin (622573) <taybin.taybin@com> on Sunday January 21 2007, @11:24AM (#17702096) Homepage
    Also check out 99 bottles of beer [99-bottles-of-beer.net] and Hello World Collection [roesler-ac.de].

    • Re:if you like this... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Coryoth (254751) on Sunday January 21 2007, @01:32PM (#17703038) Homepage Journal
      Also worth looking into is LiteratePrograms [literateprograms.org] which provides a wide range of algorithms written (and documented - hence the "literate" part) in a wide variety of languages. Currently there are over 50 different "Hello World" programs in different languages, including such things as AliceML, AspectJ, Haskell, and Oz, as well as all the usual suspects. More to the point, it also includes a decent variety of more interesting algorithms, including basic sorting algorithms (quick sort, merge sort etc.) in a wide variety of languages, right the way up to a basic GUI file manager in GTK. It's a Wiki, and still growing, but it seems to be well ahead of RosettaCode at the moment.

  • One task that isn't on there (Score:5, Funny)

    by antifoidulus (807088) on Sunday January 21 2007, @11:24AM (#17702098) Homepage Journal
    "How to bring a hooker back to life" Damn, I really neede....I mean, was interested in how you would do it in Perl, for curiosity's sake....

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      use Hooker::Transactional;

      Hooker::Transactional->get_last->rollback;

      Dude, CPAN has EVERYTHING! :)

  • Should I be impressed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Fulkkari (603331) on Sunday January 21 2007, @11:28AM (#17702130)

    The site has absolutely no real content. There are only a couple of pages on the whole site. The most advanced thing found there is something along the lines of how to open a file with mIRC scripting [rosettacode.org] (no C/C++/Java) and that bash scripts (usually) start with #!/bin/bash [rosettacode.org]. Oh, please. Should I be impressed?

      • It got to the frontpage because its an interesting idea.
        The firehose will help with things like this.

        I agree it was empty and its implimentation feels flawed, but it gives a baseline for thoughts other people may be having.
        I know *I* have been thinking about this since I saw it and how it should/could be once filled.

        It gets a thumbs up from me.

  • Been Done (Score:3, Informative)

    by WED Fan (911325) <akahigeNO@SPAMtrashmail.net> on Sunday January 21 2007, @11:37AM (#17702192) Homepage Journal

    It's already been done. Planet Source Code [planetsourcecode.com] does this already, and it's been around for ages. You can find code examples and complete projects.

    Then for projects in the .NET set there are a number of online translators that do C#VB.NET. Very good for moving code between different types of projects.

    Now, something that would be truely useful would be a service that would do translations from a wider variety languages.

    • Re:Been Done (Score:4, Informative)

      by Zontar The Mindless (9002) <`jon' `at' `hiveminds.net'> on Sunday January 21 2007, @12:16PM (#17702442) Homepage
      Planet Source Code is not that hot. There's heaps of trivial examples that just aren't done very well - like a "new" PHP4-style class for connecting to MySQL which hard-codes "localhost" for the server name. I guess the guy hasn't heard of mysqli [php.net]?

      The quality of the writing itself is pretty bad, too. People who are purporting to teach you something ought to be a bit more... well... literate.

      Neither am I inclined to be overly impressed when a site throws 175+ JavaScript and CSS errors in Firefox in just the first 2-3 pages. (I didn't bother counting the errors after that point.)

  • In a more focused form (Score:4, Informative)

    by aero6dof (415422) <aero6dof@yahoo.com> on Sunday January 21 2007, @01:06PM (#17702858) Homepage
    Sourceforge has hosted to Programming Language Examples Alike Cookbook project for a while now. It does something similar, filling out "Perl Cookbook" recipes for a fairly wide range of languages...

    http://pleac.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

    • Pointless, don't bother! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Did you even bother looking at the site first? Perhaps not as it's slashdotted. The idea isn't bad, but it's just a nearly empty wiki. Not many languages, and looking at some tasks, most of the stuff wasn't very useful. For example, I looked at the file I/O task, and there were no versions for C, C++, Java, C#, VB (not that I'd want that), PHP (idem) nor anything like that - but there was a mIRC scripting version...

      Might be worth posting somewhere once there's actual useful content, but just not now.

      But the

      • Re:Pointless, don't bother! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JoshJ (1009085) on Sunday January 21 2007, @12:23PM (#17702504) Journal
        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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by lexarius (560925)
        Apple, which currently has a product called Rosetta, which allows PPC code to be executed on Intel chips by translating it dynamically or something.

    • Re:Right tool for the job (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Frumious Wombat (845680) on Sunday January 21 2007, @01:26PM (#17703004)
      Years ago my copy of Kruse's "Data Structures" came with examples of how to do all the then-hip dynamic data structures (linked lists, trees, etc) in languages without pointers. This became useful when writing high-level Fortran-77 programs, as it allowed moving beyond Gomputed Goto and Arithmetic If for algorithms. In the same vein "Numerical Algorithms" (Teukolsky, Vettering, et al.) showed how to get decent array performance and add various oversights (such as complex numbers and complex arithmetic) to C-type languages.

      >>>I see this ending up as an effort to shoehorn concepts unique to one language to another language (building web sites in COBOL *shiver*).

      I once saw a series of cgi-bin routines written in Fortran-77 because that's what the web-site designer knew, and the schedule was too tight for her to learn Perl in time. (for those of you who started programming after compiled languages gave way to Python/Perl/Ruby/WombatCode6000, get a copy of G77, and try to compare two strings of different lengths) It's no big deal; given enough time one Turing-complete language can accomplish the same work as any other Turing-complete language. It's just the degree of pain you're willing to endure that's the limiting factor.

      As for the F77/cgi-bin programmer, She's a full professor now (though not in Comp. Sci, alas),

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