Coding Challenge #3 Disscussion

[Mark Balla]

I forgot to mention an idea I had and today's post to this thread reminded me...

Everyone talks about keeping the project small. Suppose the challenge was this:

Some LAVA zealot creates a simple app that does XYZ. The challenge is simply to add a feature to the app. Any feature. This way a person can bite off as much or as little as they choose. Competition is judged on best feature added. The general framework already exists, so there's less of the "blank diagram syndrome". Maybe there's a cool bit of UI that another programmer could convert to an XControl. Maybe the program needs a faster core algorithm. The options are wider for what could be worked on and there's less of a "this is the right answer and if you haven't gotten to this point then you aren't done" which tends to make for long hours of programming to hit a specified target.

We could start with any of several items in the Code Repositiory.

This would take us away from algorithmic challenges -- which depend heavily on programming experience and moments of eureka to solve -- and moves us towards expansion of LabVIEW -- which anyone might be able to contribute to from the parts of LV that they happen to know.

It's time to start working on the next coding challenge. For this challenge I'm going to steer more towards open discussion instead of the behind the scenes committee idea. Personally I would like to see more participation and discussion as opposed to a technically and objective selection process.

Using Aristos' Idea as a starting point Here are my Ideas so far.

• Take a week or 2 to publicly discuss the format and rules.
  
• Next we have a period where we will nominate the application to use in the challenge.
  
• After the nomination time we will vote on the application to use for the challenge.
  
• Like before the submissions will be sent to me and I will give them an anonymous name and place them in the challenge list.
  
• When the challenge is completed we will have a silent vote for the best modification/feature.
  
• If there is a lot of submission We may take the top vote getters and have a revote.
  

Ideas I would like to discuss:

• Does the base application have to come from the CR or should we let people submit non CR applications.
  
• Should the author of the selected application be excluded from the challenge?
  
• How much time should we give for the challenge?
  
• Any other ideas that would make the coding challenge more interesting.