In today’s ever-changing, demanding, technologically advancing world, it’s suffice to say that a Computer Science student’s future strongly relies on how technically sound he/she is. Often, it gets difficult for a student to understand where to start developing the required skills from, and this leads to confusion and eventually stress. However, what if there was a platform for a college student to tone those skills right from the scratch and gradually advance to further levels, thereby converting that skill into an asset? And to always have that platform throw in motivational grade points to encourage the student to keep going is another added bonus. Our website does exactly that. And this is what makes it extremely unique and equally challenging to build, which is exactly why it stands out.
CodeRunner is a platform for those who would like to test their skill set in their respective technological field, and it also enhances and nurtures their coding skills simultaneously. It’s a portal that can compile and execute code, all the same time maintaining a database to keep a track of the user’s profile and performance. It’s no secret that practice makes a man perfect. CodeRunner not only contains a plethora of questions for the user to crack and develop his coding skills, but it also develops a sense of problem solving ability in the user. The web application also awards collective grade points to the user and frequently encourages and motivates the user to push to thrive for more challenging tasks as he/she advances.
Coming to the functionality of the web application, it consists of 8 web pages, each with a strong JavaScript/jQuery base for the client side scripting, CSS/SCSS formatted styling and a backend with PHP/C# with a probable MVC model and a server to support the entire system. The questions regarding the website are retrieved from the database, and the database also contains the details of the user to keep a track of his grade points.
The first webpage is the prerequisite Login/SignUp page where the user is either requested to type in his login credentials or sign up to be a part of the CodeRunner community. On the Login page, there’s a navigation bar on top that has the logo of the website and either leads to an About page or Contact Us page based on the user’s preference. About page and Contact us page are two other webpages that contain information about how the website works and how to reach out to the developer team regarding any queries respectively. Once logged in, a home page appears.
The home page has a list of questions that the user can chose from on the left with a box in the centre that has the first question and space to answer the question by default. If the user selects a different question, that question appears on the top of the box instead. To the right of the same page, the grade points and submissions are listed out. The nav bar on top contains the links to Dashboard, Profile, About and Contact Us.
When the Dashboard is clicked on, it leads to a webpage that has user details, a record of his scores and grade points, a rating of his accuracy to the left. And to the right, there’s a question box that prompts the user with “Do you want to practice?”. If the user clicks on this, it leads to another webpage that has several categories or domains that the user can practice from. For example, this webpage consists of categories like Python, Data Structures, Problem Solving etc, each when clicked upon lead to another page with a few more questions and their difficulty level.
In a nutshell, through our website we plan to make programming a fun experience for the user, all the while toning his skills. We also plan to make mini certification programs based on how many levels the user has finished to encourage and validate the user’s intelligence.