Challenge HN: A reference implementation of HN on different platforms?
This thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1342353 has got me thinking.
That usually leads to nothing, but this time something popped out that may be workable.
I'd like to propose a 'reference' implementation of a non-toy website on various platforms, showing what the best practice way is of solving the various challenges that you run in to when creating a web based application.
The goal is to get a common problem solved many times over for comparison purposes. It can help with learning a new platform (I think the main goal) when coming from a platform that you already know, so you are concentrating on studying the platform and the solutions when you already understand the problem.
Sort of a Rosetta's stone for web applications.
The idea itself is not original, in the middle ages of computing a guy called Lance Leventhal had a series of assembly language books that would re-implement the same programs on different platforms and it helped a lot when switching from one architecture to another to have both implementations in front of you.
Because we are all very familiar with the HN website I'd propose that we would spec HN down to the last bolt with respect to how it works as experienced by the user, and then use that to build the various implementations off.
Some languages may have more than one implementation (for instance, because there are multiple frameworks or because someone rolled their own or did not use a framework at all), but that only adds to the general body of knowledge of how things are 'done' in a certain environment.
Is this a viable idea?
Any takers?