Re: [Pharo-users] My Keynote at the Salta Conference
Thank you for your well-considered responses. I appreciate them. As I said in the original post, I am open to an alternative approach to the competition. The current approach may be problematic, I don't know. I still want a five-round four-person team event. I want to stretch this out for maximum effect. I want to structure it like a sporting event in order to raise excitement. There are several key points: 1) It has to sufficiently challenging to the contestants so that they really learn to use Pharo effectively. This should also help to mitigate cheating. After all, where are they going to find a sharp Smalltalker to aid in deception? ;-) 2) It has to be easy to "judge" each round. This should be automatable. After all, if there are 500 teams, we don't want to spend countless hours judging the team submissions manually. It would be daunting. At this point, I welcome any new ideas for the competition. Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list wrote
OK, sorry. I missed that.
Now I've read it. And it requires a customized VM that can count bytecodes executed against a budget and terminate execution if the budget is exceeded.
For the developer it requires an awareness of the relationship between bytecodes and source code. I, personally, have virtually no idea what that relationship is. I used Smalltalk as a high level language and try not to worry about how expensive things are until it actually matters. I think that is most developers.
So I'm not really a fan of this contest approach. The implementation is certainly beyond my skills. I have been dabbling with Squeak since its release and only recently trying to get into Pharo "in anger" because I have a couple projects I personally want to realize. I'm finding the entire thing to be really fast moving and hard to get my head around and the VM is pretty much still impenetrable to me after a couple months trying to build one.
So I'm definitely not your guy and the number of people who are on top of the VM enough to pull this off is likely on the order of ten.
Maybe a different kind of coding contest? I'd try adapting problems from some existing competition questions.
On Nov 20, 2018, at 6:32 PM, horrido <
horrido.hobbies@
> wrote:
Basically, implementing what was outlined in David Buck's document (attached to the original post). It may involve hacking the VM to count byte codes.
SmalltalkContestIdeas.docx <http://forum.world.st/file/t128560/SmalltalkContestIdeas.docx <http://forum.world.st/file/t128560/SmalltalkContestIdeas.docx>>
Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list wrote
OK, I'll bite.
What does "code the competition" mean exactly?
I last used Smalltalk "in anger" pre-pharo with squeak. I live ST and am looking for a way back "in" but TBH the changes from Squeak are vast and I have too many ideas to work on and keep hitting walls.
I'm intrigued but need more direction. Whatcha need - ELI5.
On Nov 20, 2018, at 5:13 PM, horrido <
horrido.hobbies@
> wrote:
No, the money isn't lost. I was merely suggesting that without some help, the marketing opportunity for this competition would be lost.
I'm not sure you understand how much work is involved in this project. I will be doing a great deal of the heavy lifting. I have to setup the competition website server. I have to advertise or reach out to high schools across the country. I have to get local media interested in covering the competition. I have to look into producing the T-shirt swag, and shipping the T-shirts to all contest participants, and at an affordable rate to fit the budget. Those are only a few things off the top of my head.
Coding the actual contest problems according to David Buck's prescription shouldn't be open-ended and shouldn't be a huge commitment. I imagine it would be a couple of months of work during spare time.
jgfoster wrote
Hi Richard,
So the $$$$ that we gave you is now âlost"? Perhaps people didnât understand what you expected from us other than money. What else is needed to make your project a success? We are supposed to âcode the competitionâ as well? Anything else?
Is this practice of insulting people (âDoesnât anyone care about promoting Pharo?â) supposed to be motivating? Is it a demonstration of you expertise at marketing? Does it build confidence about how the Smalltalk community will be perceived by the new arrivals?
Iâve appreciated your blog posts and your passion, but Iâm put off by this approach.
James
P.S. I realize that Iâm probably doing what Iâm criticizing in youâthrowing out negative comments from behind a keyboard to score points when I might not be so harsh in person.
On Nov 20, 2018, at 2:36 PM, Richard Kenneth Eng <
horrido.hobbies@
> wrote:
Not even a single nibble? Doesn't anyone care about promoting Pharo?
What a colossal lost opportunity!
On Sun, 18 Nov 2018 at 09:29, Richard Kenneth Eng <
horrido.hobbies@
<mailto:
horrido.hobbies@
>> wrote:
Some of you may already be aware of my presentation at Smalltalks 2018, the outcome of which was full funding for my Smalltalk programming competition. See My Keynote at the Salta Conference <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888> <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888>>; <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888>> <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888&gt>>;;;.
Three years ago, David Buck provided an outline for the competition. See attached.
I would like to use that as a starting point, though I am open to alternative suggestions.
The reason for this post is the following...
I need volunteers to code the competition. I am nowhere near qualified to do so, as my knowledge of Pharo is limited.
Without help from Pharoers (or, at least, Smalltalkers), the competition is in jeopardy. This is a great opportunity to promote Pharo. (The original competition three years ago was going to use VisualWorks, but since Cincom did not see fit to support my competition this year, I decided to go with Pharo.)
Please contact me if anyone is interested. It would be a terrible shame to waste this opportunity.
Regards, Richard
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David Buck provided a revision on his proposal: I agree with tossing the VM hack - it's not worth it. An objective score is best and I would prefer not to score based on number of classes, number of methods or method size. The score should be simply the highest total of captured cells in the game within a certain time period (eg. 60 seconds). Here's how I imagine this would work: The game is run in several rounds. In each round, we throw in a new aspect to the game (kill cells, teleports, etc). For each round, we provide some sample boards for the students to test their algorithms on their own computers. At the end of the round, the students submit their code to us. We then take each submission run it on our computer with a new board that the students haven't seen. As we run the game, we capture the moves and the score after each move. We can then take the top 20 (or so) submissions and create a video. I would like to see the video look like an Olympic event - every 10 seconds, show the current time versus the best score at that time. It would also be nice to have a running audio commentary for the video. We could then stream the video real-time for the teams to watch and we can make the video available after the stream is finished for teams who may have missed the live stream or wish to watch it again. All of the rounds up to the final round are just "practice rounds" for bragging rights. The final round is what determines which team wins the scholarship prizes. If we do it well, we should be able to get media attention such as local or national news. ---------- Sounds good to me! No hacking the VM. It looks like it shouldn't be too difficult to implement. horrido wrote
Thank you for your well-considered responses. I appreciate them.
As I said in the original post, I am open to an alternative approach to the competition. The current approach may be problematic, I don't know.
I still want a five-round four-person team event. I want to stretch this out for maximum effect. I want to structure it like a sporting event in order to raise excitement.
There are several key points:
1) It has to sufficiently challenging to the contestants so that they really learn to use Pharo effectively. This should also help to mitigate cheating. After all, where are they going to find a sharp Smalltalker to aid in deception? ;-)
2) It has to be easy to "judge" each round. This should be automatable. After all, if there are 500 teams, we don't want to spend countless hours judging the team submissions manually. It would be daunting.
At this point, I welcome any new ideas for the competition.
Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list wrote
OK, sorry. I missed that.
Now I've read it. And it requires a customized VM that can count bytecodes executed against a budget and terminate execution if the budget is exceeded.
For the developer it requires an awareness of the relationship between bytecodes and source code. I, personally, have virtually no idea what that relationship is. I used Smalltalk as a high level language and try not to worry about how expensive things are until it actually matters. I think that is most developers.
So I'm not really a fan of this contest approach. The implementation is certainly beyond my skills. I have been dabbling with Squeak since its release and only recently trying to get into Pharo "in anger" because I have a couple projects I personally want to realize. I'm finding the entire thing to be really fast moving and hard to get my head around and the VM is pretty much still impenetrable to me after a couple months trying to build one.
So I'm definitely not your guy and the number of people who are on top of the VM enough to pull this off is likely on the order of ten.
Maybe a different kind of coding contest? I'd try adapting problems from some existing competition questions.
On Nov 20, 2018, at 6:32 PM, horrido <
horrido.hobbies@
> wrote:
Basically, implementing what was outlined in David Buck's document (attached to the original post). It may involve hacking the VM to count byte codes.
SmalltalkContestIdeas.docx <http://forum.world.st/file/t128560/SmalltalkContestIdeas.docx <http://forum.world.st/file/t128560/SmalltalkContestIdeas.docx>>
Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list wrote
OK, I'll bite.
What does "code the competition" mean exactly?
I last used Smalltalk "in anger" pre-pharo with squeak. I live ST and am looking for a way back "in" but TBH the changes from Squeak are vast and I have too many ideas to work on and keep hitting walls.
I'm intrigued but need more direction. Whatcha need - ELI5.
On Nov 20, 2018, at 5:13 PM, horrido <
horrido.hobbies@
> wrote:
No, the money isn't lost. I was merely suggesting that without some help, the marketing opportunity for this competition would be lost.
I'm not sure you understand how much work is involved in this project. I will be doing a great deal of the heavy lifting. I have to setup the competition website server. I have to advertise or reach out to high schools across the country. I have to get local media interested in covering the competition. I have to look into producing the T-shirt swag, and shipping the T-shirts to all contest participants, and at an affordable rate to fit the budget. Those are only a few things off the top of my head.
Coding the actual contest problems according to David Buck's prescription shouldn't be open-ended and shouldn't be a huge commitment. I imagine it would be a couple of months of work during spare time.
jgfoster wrote
Hi Richard,
So the $$$$ that we gave you is now âlost"? Perhaps people didnât understand what you expected from us other than money. What else is needed to make your project a success? We are supposed to âcode the competitionâ as well? Anything else?
Is this practice of insulting people (âDoesnât anyone care about promoting Pharo?â) supposed to be motivating? Is it a demonstration of you expertise at marketing? Does it build confidence about how the Smalltalk community will be perceived by the new arrivals?
Iâve appreciated your blog posts and your passion, but Iâm put off by this approach.
James
P.S. I realize that Iâm probably doing what Iâm criticizing in youâthrowing out negative comments from behind a keyboard to score points when I might not be so harsh in person.
On Nov 20, 2018, at 2:36 PM, Richard Kenneth Eng <
horrido.hobbies@
> wrote:
Not even a single nibble? Doesn't anyone care about promoting Pharo?
What a colossal lost opportunity!
On Sun, 18 Nov 2018 at 09:29, Richard Kenneth Eng <
horrido.hobbies@
<mailto:
horrido.hobbies@
>> wrote:
Some of you may already be aware of my presentation at Smalltalks 2018, the outcome of which was full funding for my Smalltalk programming competition. See My Keynote at the Salta Conference <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888> <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888>>; <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888>> <https://hackernoon.com/my-keynote-at-the-salta-conference-435dfaccc888&gt>>;;;.
Three years ago, David Buck provided an outline for the competition. See attached.
I would like to use that as a starting point, though I am open to alternative suggestions.
The reason for this post is the following...
I need volunteers to code the competition. I am nowhere near qualified to do so, as my knowledge of Pharo is limited.
Without help from Pharoers (or, at least, Smalltalkers), the competition is in jeopardy. This is a great opportunity to promote Pharo. (The original competition three years ago was going to use VisualWorks, but since Cincom did not see fit to support my competition this year, I decided to go with Pharo.)
Please contact me if anyone is interested. It would be a terrible shame to waste this opportunity.
Regards, Richard
-- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html <http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html>; <http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html> <http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html>>;;
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