Dienstag, 20. April 2010

Feedback

Today I got an interesting feedback (unfortunately without an e-mail address):
This is a brilliant idea, but your implementation seems rediculously complex. Creating a workspace folder (on Windows, no less!), installing Maven, etc is way too complicated and detracts from the simplicity of the Kata.
I think a better solution would be an online approach - see the problem, type some text into an (auto-syntax-highlighting) box, press the button. No install, no workspace, just clicking on a link :-)
That's my thoughts exactly! It just seemed to be a better idea to just start at first and go from there. At the beginning I was thinking about how to provide an online solution - but I couldn't answer all the questions I had:
  • How to do online, real-time syntax-highlighting? 
  • How to provide auto complete? 
  • Should it be client- or server-based? 
  • If server-based, what kind of server would I need to handle the requests?
  • If client, how could I embed maven within a JavaFX app?
  • And maybe the most important: How would I be able to still keep working on my commercial project after I pull this stunt ;-)
I thought that most Java programmers already have the SDK and Maven installed, so I find my way still way more comfortable than setting up the project and creating the required acceptance tests yourself. But I have to agree with the anonymous author - let's see if I'll get there eventually...

Cheers,
stephanos

1 Kommentar:

  1. Excellent website and idea.

    I think most Java programmers will have the JDK, but may not have Maven. So that is a bit of a step. In fact I just signed-up to do a kata, but realized that I needed Maven, so I guess I will have to wait till I install that.

    Can you allow people to download a zip file which contains all the files, including a build.xml.

    That way after coding the user simply does a 'ant test' to see if they got it right. I think Maven seems to be a bit too heavy for this. Just ANT will suffice and keep things simple.

    BTW I am experimenting with do-it-yourself graduation in computer science and was looking for websites which have programming problems, and came across your website.

    It's great work. Thanks and keep it going.

    --
    Regards
    Parag
    http://opencs.wikidot.com (My experiment with open social learning)

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