John Carter wrote: <snip>
Simple enough?
I would argue that that is too simple.
Although it is probably good to demonstrate how easily one can produce a program to solve the problem, we need to also demonstrate the features of the language.
I am not convinced that the problem as outlined can do that.
I'm thinking that maybe we also need to write the results to a file nicely formatted as well.
What do you think?
Not what I think. Who are the audience? And what do they want to know? I'm guessing the audience will be mostly either:
1. Don't know anything about scripting languages or what to do with them.
2. Know one language, and curious about the others.
I would like to try and include some good info for both types, but, frankly, folks in category one will find much over their head I think.
I would much rather see less code and more talk. Grovelling through some code in a talk is boring for the audience. Anything that is of a reasonable size to show off the "features" of a language is probably too big.
The task I suggested (off the top of my head, BTW) would be suitable for a taste at least. But presenters should feel free to add extra bits (e.g. output to HTML table, command-line options, case-insensitivity - use your imagination!).
I'm happy to leave the final decision to Nick (who has volunteered to make it!)
Cheers, Carl.
