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Ask HN: What is the coding exercise you use to explore a new language?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the coding exercise you use to explore a new language?

#51
"How quickly can I build 50 different tiny demos that each show one thing"? Small size means you can focus on one thing at a time, before you hit #50 you'll probably already be building off of what you've learned in past demos and combining them as you try new things.

Re: Ask HN: What is the coding exercise you use to explore a new language?

#53
post #23

I typically write a raytracer while attempting to stick to a small set of "best-practices" for the language I'm trying to learn. I also use this exercise from time-to-time to test new language features (for example C++20 ranges/coroutines recently). I also recommend this same exercise to others through the book "The Ray Tracer Challenge" [1] by Jamis Buck, because it describes an entire implementation of a raytracer…

Great suggestion! And you earned them a sale from me. Going to try this out to bring my rustlang knowledge up to speed.

Re: Ask HN: What is the coding exercise you use to explore a new language?

#55
post #23

I typically write a raytracer while attempting to stick to a small set of "best-practices" for the language I'm trying to learn. I also use this exercise from time-to-time to test new language features (for example C++20 ranges/coroutines recently). I also recommend this same exercise to others through the book "The Ray Tracer Challenge" [1] by Jamis Buck, because it describes an entire implementation of a raytracer…

I use: https://raytracing.github.io/books/RayTracingInOneWeekend.ht...

I second the advice of loading .obj, it's a good exercise.

Implementing Octrees is another good one that will speed up your code while exploring tree structures in that language.

Re: Ask HN: What is the coding exercise you use to explore a new language?

#56
post #53
post #23

I typically write a raytracer while attempting to stick to a small set of "best-practices" for the language I'm trying to learn. I also use this exercise from time-to-time to test new language features (for example C++20 ranges/coroutines recently). I also recommend this same exercise to others through the book "The Ray Tracer Challenge" [1] by Jamis Buck, because it describes an entire implementation of a raytracer…

Great suggestion! And you earned them a sale from me. Going to try this out to bring my rustlang knowledge up to speed.

In that case, you might be interested in this youtube playlist [1]. The uploader claims to be new to Rust and implements the entire book in it. I haven't watched it myself, but had it bookmarked at the recommendation of a friend.

[1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy68GuC77sUTyOUvDhVboQoOl...

Re: Ask HN: What is the coding exercise you use to explore a new language?

#58
post #22
post #20

John Carmack re-implementing Wolfenstein 3D to learn Haskell comes to mind.

Doesn't seem like a quick exercise to me. LOL.

For Carmack it might be a quick exercise. Plus he'll probably fix any bugs in the Haskell implementation he's using
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