I think what I doing with interfacing with VB6 OCX forms as intelligent UI objects is a step up from Floyd.
Maybe so, and I am very interested, but it is a bit too esoteric for most - and it might smack a bit of of filling in failings in the language.
Unfortunately, a toolbox language is unlikely to win any arguments against people who are keen on big-front-end languages and their own favourite tool-box languages.
Coding challenges are a reasonable way of comparing languages but, IMHO, the challenges tend to either be excessively simplistic (Floyd triangle) or overly complex (chess solver, a traditional challenge class). I find them rather tedious, and the religious wars arising to be ... irritating.
The traditional example applications (in a fairly random order) used to be:-
- A simple accounting program (MS continued this with their Northwind exemplars)
- A Tic-Tac-Toe game
- A Chess game
- Calculation of prime numbers
- A simple "expert" system
- Colossal Cave (AKA Hobbit, AKA Adventure, AKA ....)
- Hello World
These all show off some aspect of the language to the prospective user though they are, admittedly, rather unexciting.
To my mind, the most useful examples are programs that contain some useful, reusable code that can be compared for speed and efficiency (like sorting routines, simple database operations like "find in file
filename.asc", Simple user I/O routines etc.) and where aesthetics may be considered (screen handling, user interface etc.).
But, there again, I don't program for fun - I program for a purpose, and use whichever tool meets my needs best. Right now, that is a combo of SB and VB6.
