On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 19:54:46 +0900, Martin Ankerl
<martin.ankerl / gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I have been thinking a bit on creating a new language shootout. All
> the available shootouts focus mostly on performance benchmark, I want
> one that focuses more on code readability, required time to implement,
> or something like that. Therefore I would need quite different
> applications. For example "write a multithreaded server that offers the
> current time". Any other ideas?


It's a clever idea, but the beauty of benchmarks is that they are
unambiguous (within reason) and completely quantifiable.  How are you
going to measure, for example, "readability"?

Too, required time to implement will have SUCH a high standard
deviation between people with different skill sets as to be almost
unusable.

So, a "shootout" doesn't seem entirely appropriate here so much as a
"best practices" or "common patterns" site across languages I'd think.

That said, the idea of getting the language inventors to submit
is...questionable.  It'd be interesting (but only interesting, not
much more than that) if you could do it, but it's a pipe dream.  I
also wouldn't necessarily consider the language author's code the
pinnacle to which to aspire; very often the author's code isn't even
that good by their own admission; their strength is design.