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Create stub files for all exercises #106

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kytrinyx opened this issue Aug 3, 2019 · 1 comment
Open

Create stub files for all exercises #106

kytrinyx opened this issue Aug 3, 2019 · 1 comment
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@kytrinyx
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kytrinyx commented Aug 3, 2019

We have decided to require all file-based tracks to provide stubs for their exercises.

The lack of stub file generates an unnecessary pain point within Exercism, contributing a significant proportion of support requests, making things more complex for our students, and hindering our ability to automatically run test-suites and provide automated analysis of solutions.

We believe that it’s essential to understand error messages, know how to use an IDE, and create files. However, getting this right as you’re just getting used to a language can be a frustrating distraction, as it can often require a lot of knowledge that tends to seep in over time. At the start, it can be challenging to google for all of these details: what file extension to use, what needs to be included, etc. Getting people up to speed with these things are not Exercism’s focus, and we’ve decided that we are better served by removing this source of confusion, letting people get on with actually solving the exercises.

The original discussion for this is at exercism/discussions#238.

Therefore, we’d like this track to provide a stub file for each exercise.

  • If this track already provides stub files for all exercises, please close this issue.
  • If this track already has an open issue for creating stubs, then my apologies. Please close one as a duplicate.
  • Otherwise, please respond to this issue with useful details about what needs to be done to complete this task in this track so that people who are not familiar with the track may easily contribute.
@mawis
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mawis commented Aug 31, 2019

Thanks for reporting this issue. The PureScript track does have a stub file for every exercise already.

But in the referred discussion I found this:

Adding progression: Each core exercise can have a reduced stub, until we just have a blank file with the correct filename. This gives a student a bit more work to do each time, but also means they have previous exercises to refer back to.

I think this is a good point, which we haven't implemented yet. Beside changing names we are using the same stub in every exercise. At the beginning (hello-world) we might want to add the function signature … while at the end (word-count) we could maybe remove the module declaration.

@mawis mawis self-assigned this Aug 31, 2019
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