For frontend development on the web TodoMVC is an established example to test programming languages with; whether it is performance, ease of implementation or whatever your metric is.<p>But not everything runs in the browser, and whether you are looking for the most enjoyable programming language out there or you want the most concise or ... you need a project to kick the tyres of a programming language. What is yours?
Jhon Carmack (creator of wolfstein and quake) reimplements quake when he wants to learn.<p><a href="http://functionaltalks.org/2013/08/26/john-carmack-thoughts-on-haskell/" rel="nofollow">http://functionaltalks.org/2013/08/26/john-carmack-thoughts-...</a>