The TPK algorithm reads in an array of 11 values, applies a particular function to each value, and then writes the result in reverse order. It serves just to illustrate some of the usual actions that an imperative programming language must perform. It was used in
Knuth, Donald Ervin, and Luis Trabb Pardo. ``The early development of programming languages.'' In Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1977, pages 419-96.to compare many early programming languages. We use the same algorithm to compare some more recent programming languages.
One WWW page, 99 Bottles of Beer, has a collection of over 1000 programs in different languages that print out the same ditty. Nearly as many versions of "Hello, World!" program can be found at the "Hello, World!" WWW page.