dtutor.org: a call to action

[Tyro[17]]

On 5/5/13 6:38 PM, Ivan Kazmenko wrote:
>> I. Features to be supported
>>
>>     Problems - Staged ICPC problems for users to attempt. Solutions may
>> be submitted online for comparison against previously submitted
>> solutions to determine efficiency ranking and users may choose to create
>> and account to keep track of progress.
>>
>>     Online Judge - to be used to determine accuracy and efficiency of
>> submitted solutions to problems and planned programming contests.
>
> You mean algorithmic contests like ACM ICPC, right?  There are a few
> online judges supporting the D programming language which already have
> all other necessary infrastructure (problem archive, online judge and
> server itself, etc).

Yes. So is your suggestion that I leave this sort of thing to already 
established sites that caters specifically to these sort of contests? I 
would actually love to do that but my experience is sites (shootouts 
etc...) tend to drop coverage of D on a whim.

> First, there's Codeforces (http://codeforces.com).  There are already
> hundreds of algorithmic problems in the problem archive which can be
> solved individually or by participating in "virtual" past contests.  New
> contests (5 problems, 2 hour duration) are held, like, weekly.  The
> online judge supports a number of programming languages.  They recently
> upgraded the D compiler to the current DMD 2.062 (Windows version).
>
> Then there's Sphere Online Judge (http://spoj.pl).  They support 48
> programming languages, their D version is listed as GDC 4.1.3 which as I
> understand is pretty old (D1?).

Or is outdated and becomes useless to our community.

> And then there is a number of mathematical and/or algorithmic online
> contest sites where one runs the code locally on given inputs and
> submits only the result.  Examples of these are Project Euler
> (http://projecteuler.net) and Rosalind (http://rosalind.info).  After
> you successfully solve a problem, you usually get access to a forum
> where people post and discuss their approaches in different programming
> languages, trying to show the strengths of their tools.

ProjectEuler is very interesting but I haven't tried Rosalind so cannot 
comment there. The object of these sites however is not to teach 
programming (though programming is one method that can be used) but 
rather to uncover the solution to a given problem by whatever means 
necessary. I've seen solutions reached by simply loading data into Excel 
and performing some sorts and or inserting a couple of formulas. Not 
what I'm after.

> An online judge dedicated to D seems like a fun idea at first. Still,
> things usually go the other way around.  Much effort is put into getting
> an online judge up and running.  It is far from trivial to constantly
> add good algorithmic problems.  But once you have these two, adding
> support for a programming language is a matter of hours.
>
> Regarding programming contests, there's another flavor of them: instead
> of solving small math/algo problems in a limited time frame, the
> competitors can design or develop a small-ish software component and
> submit them for a formal review.  The judging criteria should however be
> precise enough (i.e. carefully prepared by someone having a clear
> general picture).  This could even turn into a successful business
> model, the presentation at
> http://bsr.london.edu/files/1357/who-needs-employees.pdf‎ seems to
> describe it in more detail.  It may happen that a similar model could be
> adopted to some parts of D development, provided that some of the
> current developers will like the idea and be really willing to try it.

Now there is an idea I'm willing to support. This is the sort of 
contests I would actually like to promote on the site for professional 
programmers. But timed math/algo type contests are also necessary for 
those in academia to hone their skills. The hope is that college 
students will be able to demonstrate there D programming acumen in 
national/international contest sponsored by yours truly

> -----
>
> Ivan Kazmenko.

Andrew