CodeIgniter by Parts
You can now enter the competition.
Today, I watched the playoff rounds of Coudal Partner’s Layer Tennis. All four designers / artists were incredibly talented and each “volley” / round over the course of the two and half hours (15 minutes each, 10 rounds) brought on an even better show.
How can this be applied to programming or building an application / plugin?
For designs and visual media, this tournament was a smart idea. Have the public vote on the progression of pieces or which pieces affected them more. However, if this tournament or concept was to be brought to CodeIgniter or Wordpress, for example, how would people vote or how would we judge the competitors? We can’t judge by the “beauty” of the code… or by the final product because it wouldn’t reflect individually the developer. Installing the application after each round wouldn’t be convenient either. How do you keep the pressure of keeping up with your competitor while still allowing for the public to vote?
My proposal is CodeIgniter by Parts. This would be a series of matches between CodeIgniter developers – perhaps in a tournament style or in a league style or just single matches.
Each match starts with a concept – for example, build a lifestream application with the ability to read from 3 feeds. This one concept is required in addition to an installer for the application. The developer can work out a basic installer or any other code before the match but he will not know the concept until the beginning. The rest is up to the developer to extend as far out as he/she thinks is necessary to win the public’s votes. Each match would be over a 2 1/2 hour period. Every half hour the developers would be required to check in their code to a repository. The developers would then have to response to the changes: should I mimic the feature the other introduced? Should I go on with my big feature? Meanwhile, a live twitter feed would be ongoing where users can suggest what they would like to see added.
At the end, the public can vote on who they believe is the winner by installing the applications on their server. They will have one day to vote. On the following day, the winner is announced and will either move on the next stage (if it is a tournament) or be satisfied with the fame and glory. All projects will be released as open source under the GNU General Public License.
What do you think of this idea?
I love it!
It’s a brilliant idea and would prove for some more really interesting entertainment – we could take it a step further and get them to narrate the building of the app by recording it through a screencast program like iShowU.
Jamie Rumbelow
20 Jun 09 at 5:08 am
I like that but that might be something to do after the app is built because 2 1/2 hours is already little time.
Daniel
20 Jun 09 at 9:46 am
I generally like the idea but think a 2.5 hour time limit is pretty short for the given example (a lifestreaming application).
Michael Wales
21 Jun 09 at 6:30 pm
For my specific example, the required task would be to parse 3 feeds in a lifestreaming application context. It would be up to the developer to decide what to include – how much he/she thinks is necessary to win. Plus, anything after 2.5 hours tends to be long.
Daniel
21 Jun 09 at 6:39 pm
[...] a follow-up to my previous entry, the CodeIgniter by Parts is ready and online at http://nexterous.com/ciparts/. You can follow [...]
CodeIgniter by Parts Entry at Nexterous
22 Jun 09 at 9:36 am
How much other pre-written code can we bring in? ie.. templating system, installer stuff (i know you mentioned that), tags etc.. basically, can we use any pre-written (self or 3rd party) that is only used to support the app, not be the logic of it?
Phil Palmieri
2 Jul 09 at 10:17 am
@Phil : that’s a good question. For instance, I would have been using the Simple Pie library for the lifestreaming example. Would it be right to do so?
Benoa
2 Jul 09 at 10:44 am
I posted a general question on Twitter for the competitors – I was thinking perhaps that you could only use your own written libraries and a set of three 3rd party libraries that I specify. What do you think of that?
Daniel
2 Jul 09 at 10:51 am
I feel that pre-written code should be allowed. Every developer has a toolbox of pre written stuff that helps them complete tasks in a timely manner. You should never repeat yourself! Remember, we don’t know what we will need to create until the time comes. It’s just like any other day when we get a new project.
I think 2.5 hours is enough time, depending on the application being created and how in depth it needs to be. Then again, it’s supposed to be challenging!
JR Tashjian
2 Jul 09 at 10:59 am
@Daniel: Thats fair.
JR Tashjian
2 Jul 09 at 11:24 am
Hey Daniel,
I was trying to find a way to contact you, but I don’t see an email address for you anywhere, so I thought I would give this a try. I downloaded your Sidebars plugin for Wordpress, but it doesn’t seem to work for my. I followed your instructions, but when I try to create a sidebar and hit save nothing happens. Can you help me out?
Thanks,
Brian
bigbrianson@hotmail.com
Banson
5 Aug 09 at 9:03 pm