User talk:Waldorf

Appropriate Tasks

The recent turmoil concerning the structure task brings up a basic question. What are appropriate (and by inference, inappropriate) tasks for Rosetta Code?

Is Rosetta Code only for tasks appropriate to scripting languages? One comment complained about a task dealing with data representation issues being too low level. It is my understanding that Rosetta Code intends to explore language syntax, capabilities, libraries, and structure through the implementation of specific tasks. Some tasks already exist that are best implemented with SQL or some variation thereof. Why, then is a task focused on representation issues out of bounds.

I agree that the structure task was ill-defined. Is it appropriate to define a new task to demonstrate language capabilities regarding specification of data representations?

I have no problem with exploring data representation. However, I firmly believe that tasks need to be modularized. A task that explores something needs to be created in such a way that prevents it from hindering the completion of other portions of the task. In practice, this means that a task needs to focus on as few things as possible. A task that focuses on data representation needs to be about data representation.

Modularization is important because we need article titles to be representative of what the article is about. An article named "Custom data types" is not a good name for an article about sharing data between multiple languages, while "Share data between C and another language" would be. --Short Circuit 15:44, 26 February 2007 (EST)