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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[–] captbrogers 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
It's a great question but there is a caveat to it: what platform are you aiming at?
Which of the following applies:
Here are my two credits worth of thoughts on each.
On the desktop I'd go for a calculator. It can be as simple as basic arithmetic to more advanced features like graphing output on a formula using a GUI library.
A website, either desktop or mobile, do a blog. Not just any blog, but one written using object-oriented code. Do role-based permissions, repository patterns, events, JSON (or XML) API, handling uploads, etc. Can be done with or without a framework.
Mobile apps I'm not really well versed on a concept that would be great to cover basics of each. For that, someone else will have to chime in.