User:Dgamey

My Favorite Languages
Language	Proficiency
ALGOL	Very Rusty
APL	Used to hurt my head, I can still spell it but little else
Assembly	Rusty, used to be expert S/370, moderate several others
AWK	rank beginner
BASIC	Rusty, a distant memory
Batch File	Intermediate
C	Very Rusty
C sharp	rank beginner
CLIST	Rusty, formerly expert
ColdFusion	beginner
COBOL	Rusty, read it very well
Clipper	formerly beginner
Fortran	Rusty, used to be advanced
HTML	Intermediate
Icon	Expert
J	Hurts by brain, especially tacit
Java	beginner
JavaScript	beginner
Lisp	very rusty beginner
MS SQL	beginner
MySQL	beginner
Pascal	disliked it
Perl	mildly disliked it
PHP	beginner
PL/I	Rusty, used to be advanced
Python	beginner
REXX	Rusty, formerly advanced
Sed	beginner
SAS	Formerly not too shabby
SNOBOL4	Rusty, used to be expert, still pretty good
SQL	beginner
Unicon	Expert
UNIX Shell	Intermediate
XSLT	beginner

Contributions

I maintain and organize the various Icon / Unicon related pages on Rosetta including creating an introduction/tutorial Icon+Unicon/Intro intended to illustrate some of the essentials of the language. I've created a stub for an offshoot of Unicon called ObjectIcon and an offshoot of Icon called Jcon.

Many of the Icon/Unicon solutions on Rosetta were written by me. There have been steady and some very interesting contributions by a few others (the Icon/Unicon community here is small).

Additionally, I've created a few tasks:

• Sierpinski_triangle/Graphical
• Galton_box_animation
• MD5/Implementation
• State_name_puzzle
• Longest_string_challenge
• Deepcopy

What I like about Rosetta

• I've found the ability to look at how problems are approached and solved in different languages is very practical. I've been able to describe things to developers that are based on approaches/techniques in one language and have them find a corresponding technique that they weren't previously aware of (or because I couldn't explain it in terms that they knew).
• The effort of solving a task in an area you're unfamiliar is a great learning tool that improves your technique.
• A number of the tasks are mind benders that force you to think beyond the normal/idiomatic ways of solving something. Of course these are frequently different for different languages. For me, Man_or_boy_test was one as well as a number of the functions of function tasks.
• Then there are other tasks that are just plain mind benders.
• When a number of people cooperate on a task the results can be really worthwhile.