Talk:Type detection: Difference between revisions
→Try to coax a spark of spam into useful life as an actual task ?
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:I agree – that seems sensible, unless they can give a proper account of themselves [[User:Hout|Hout]] ([[User talk:Hout|talk]]) 15:17, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
==Could the draft description be coaxed into something useful==
As Craigd has taken the trouble to start thinking about a task description, perhaps we should try to see if a spark of spam can indeed be coaxed into life as a useful task ?
Using a quick checklist of Rosetta values (copied from from the landing-page formulation), a good task with
:1. Lend itself well to solutions to in '''as many different languages as possible'''
:2. demonstrate how languages are '''similar and different'''
:3. aid a person with a '''grounding in one approach to a problem in learning another'''
Good scope for alternative approaches and the maximum number of languages is best served by the principle of [[Rosetta_Code:Add_a_Task#Task_focus|Task focus]], which is specified on the ''Add a Task'' page.
Broadly, tasks from the world outside computer languages, which make no assumptions about particular models of computing, yield better insight and deeper comparisons. The value of the Rosetta stone was that 3 very different languages were dealing with the same external (non-linguistic) task.
Given that, the text processing context sounds promising, and should probably be more focal than a framing like "Show a function/procedure which … ''. Perhaps for example, (thinking about Goal 1 above) that is not quite how a declarative language would be used. Better to make no assumptions about language-internal issues, and to frame the task itself.
On Goals 2 and 3 (demonstrate how languages are similar and different, & learning another approach) you would need to allow for the differences such as, for example, that between run-time "Type detection" and compiler-driven pattern-matching. Framing it too tightly in terms of "type detection" assumptions would marginalise some languages and miss the scope for comparing different approaches.
Finally on the learning aspect of Goal 3, it would clearly be good to find a task which learners are quite likely to actually encounter and think about
( It may also be worth looking at some existing tasks which already demonstrate type-conditional evaluation or flow – ''flattening lists'', for example – just to check that something more focused is really required ) [[User:Hout|Hout]] ([[User talk:Hout|talk]]) 18:34, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
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