Coding Priorites

Team. This Rosetta Stone for popular computing languages is progressing slowly. No, we are not chiseling stones in Al Gore's garage. We simply have other priorities. That is the joy of being a hobbyist. One can pick up and put down projects when comfortable and convenient.

Please, forgive the source examples on STDOUT and STDIN which were promised and have been undelivered. It is not vaporware; it is simply in a very low-priority thread. Also, we are not abandoning this effort.

A few other Rosetta Stones for coding exist online. Most have cryptic code for esoteric processes. Our goal is simple, well-documented, highly-readable, and understandable programming sources.

We will do our best at keeping these as simplistic as we can. Many of the coding samples exist in literature and on the WWW. Some would work well for this effort. Others would not. These simple samples just have not been gathered and placed in one location, yet.

This process which we are undertaking is often described by an egg-headed English word, chrestomathy. In Zhongwen (Chinesse), 讀本, this word has a much simpler and shorter representation. And, from the perspective of a native English-speaker, any word which looks simpler in Chinese than English is likely any over-complicated word describing a process which can easily become overly complexified.

We will work on simplifying the current WWW computer programming language chrestomathy approaches.

Only touching base. The Rosetta Team.

Apologies and Delays

Team. We have been rather busy wrapping up our activities with our CABOOSE project, and we have not generated all of the STDOUT and STDIN code snippets in the primary languages chosen for this code rosetta. We have a plan and goals, but we have experienced some delays. In the meantine, we have been thinking of how we can merge some of these efforts with our Ozark-CABOOSE project and reduce a duplication of coding plus documentation efforts. We appreciate any feedback or code contributions which you might be interested in making. Simply, send feedback@nuevoarchitect.com the commented code snippet. Any compressed archives sent will be discarded for fear of malicious code.

We will pick up activities on our Rosetta, when we can find a few more seconds of free time.

Enjoy your upcoming seasons,

The Rosetta Team.

Simplicity is Key!

Next Steps | STDIN | Pipe And Filter

Rosetta Team. When time allows we will provide examples which use a programs standard input stream (STDIN). Most frequently, STDIN is connected with the console input which comes from your keyboard. So, after mastering the exercises in the previous post which provide a simple example of producing output on STDOUT, we can read from the console and write on it also.

Once we understand these operations of input and out in the languages in this Rosetta, we write a program which reads input and writes output. This allows for gathering data from the user, processing it, and then producing results. One can envision this process as pushing information through a pipe, altering it as it passes through filters within the pipe, and collecting the results as it exits the pipe. This notion of conducting pipes and transformative filters is a common architectural pattern found in the everyday computer programming tasks of software engineering.

Happy Coding. Hunt. Peck. Think. We will supply the STDIN examples soon.

The Value of STDOUT in Web Development

Rosetta Team. This is a short note for those of you not familiar with the fundamentals of web development. The previous examples which describes printing data on the STDOUT stream that usually appears on the computer's console might seem very simple. One will likely notice that in more than one of the languages that he command for this is simply "print". Although seemingly trivial, this example shows the commonality among many programming languages; however, it shows some unique differences in console printing approaches when one considers the object-oriented languages JAVA and C#. These require the use an object's method when printing instead of a stand-alone procedure.

The true power in the development potency of the previous example on STDOUT is this, it is the primary stream for sending an HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) response. When developing web-scripts such as servlets and CGI (Common Gateway Interfaces), one will simply structure an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) response. This is the content which the client browser will display from the "prints" on the STDOUT stream from the web-script. Subsequently, the web server with is networking software handles sending the browser this HTML content in an the form of an HTTP response. This is the Power of Print!

Keep Learning. Keep Striving. Happy Coding. The Rosetta Team.

Standard Ouput | STDOUT | Files | Hello, Rosetta!

Rosetta Team. Last month, we promised that we would start compiling and chronicle some common programming tasks in various popular modern languages. This week, we are providing the most fundamental program that any computing student has learned. This is the "Hello!" program. The goal of writing a "Hello!" is testing the most basic of computing functions, output. In every computing environment, output streams exits. A program might be supplying output and places it in numerous locations: text files, data bases, the screen, and etc. The most common of these is the screen. Most frequently, the screen is the "standard" location for all program printing commands. As such, this stream of data flow is called standard output and abbreviated as stdout.

It is worth mentioning at this time that stdout is treated like a file although the output appears on the screen. As with text files, one can place information in stdout and redirect another output stream so it fills the stdout file with data. In fact, all of the data sources and sinks on a computing device are treated like files for programming purposes. For the most part, they can all be opened, closed, read, and written.

This week we are supplying a classic "Hello!" program in a few different common modern programming languages: JAVA, C#, The LAMP Trio (PERL, PHP, and Python), plus Ruby.

The Hello, Rosetta! programs require that one has the proper compilers, interpreters, and run-time engines installed on one's computer. Otherwise, they will not function.

JAVA source file
JAVA class file
PHP source file
PERL source file
Python source file
Ruby source file
C# source file

Note: All of these languages are interpreted except for JAVA which is first compiled producing *.class files that are then interpreted by the java run-time engine and C# which produces the Microsoft Common Language Invariant (CLI) or a binary *.exe file depending upon the application.

Most of our JAVA programs will be created in NetBeans or Eclipse. The C# programs will be created with Visual Studio. The PHP, PERL, Python, and Ruby programs will be scripted in a text editor.

This Code Rosetta is not necessarily a programming tutorial, but could be possibly used as such. Its ultimate goal is providing professional engineers with samples of logically equivalent programs in various languages. This will promote polyglot programming and the porting of valuable computing solutions. The first few months of examples should be fundamental and simple.

Happy Coding!

Plan and Purpose of The Code Rosetta

Welcome. The goal of the code rosetta is providing a translation index for modern high-level computer programming languages such JAVA, C#, Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python, and etc. Each page will contain a pseudo-code description of a primitive algorithm in English followed by links for the equivalent procedure in a number of languages. For those not very familiar with computing terms, an algorithm is simply a step-by-step procedure for accomplishing a goal. In the same way that many "prime" numbers can form a "composite", the adjective "primitive" suggest that this is a fundamental process description from which more complex procedures might be built. As we build a base of the standard fundamental operations with their corresponding translations, some entries will contain common compositions of these procedures for command-line, windowing, and web applications.

This efforts is inspired by the well-known Rosetta Stone which provides a translation index between many ancient languages. Also, as all software engineering students learn, any software developer worth his salt must be comfortable writing software in any language using any development methodology provided that he has the proper language references plus a programmer's guide.

Besides documenting the relationships between languages when implementing the same algorithm, we hope that we can help many engineers develop more transferable programming language skills.
Although one develops certain unique and valuable experiences when working in the same language over many years, one should always strive at being a polyglot (multilingual) developer.

In the coming days, we will provide the first and simplest algorithm for this weblog. It is the starting place for most programming classes and tutorials. Yes, that is right! We will start with "Hello World".

The Code Rosetta Team