So, "Hello, World" is the tried-and-true first program written by new programmers, and old programmers starting a new language.
I'm looking for suggestions on a more advanced default program/project, that one can write fairly quickly (10-60 minutes or so), that is likely to make use of a wide variety of a language's features, and will allow for decent comparison/contrast of of features between languages.
For instance, I will sometimes write a tic-tac-toe game, or a word/letter frequency analyzer, in a new language as I start learning it, to get a hands-on feel for the differences from languages I already know. So, maybe I already answered my own question, but I'd like to hear what other people think might make good projects for this.
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[–] mikwaheeri 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
One simple idea that I like is writing a little program to open commonly used files instead of manually navigating and double clicking. It touches on basic GUI use (creating a window & some buttons) as well as using built-in OS operations. This obviously doesn't cover a very wide range of features, but still could prove somewhat useful if expanded upon.