Forum: Ruby Learning Ruby and proving your knowledge

Hey all,

My name's Nathaniel. I'm a co-founder of a new company called
MetaBright. I think what we've made would be of interest to a lot of
people here, so I wanted to briefly tell you about it and ask for your
feedback.

We built MetaBright because we believe that people should be recognized
for their skills and abilities. We think it's better to demonstrate what
you can DO as a programmer, as opposed to saying what companies you've
worked for, or where you went to school. And when you can be a part of a
community of talented people all showing off their chops, we think
learning programming (or any skill really) is way easier and more
enjoyable.

For people who are new to programming or Ruby, you can use MB to track
your initial progress, discover what to learn next, and get inspired by
the awesome answers of our community.

For people who are already experienced programmers, you can use MB to
demonstrate and showcase your skills, while casually competing with
others. And who knows, you might learn a thing or two as well ;-)

If any of this resonates with you, I'd love it if you'd check out the
site and let me know what you think.
http://www.metabright.com/challenges/rubyonrails

We want to continue to
get better and would appreciate your feedback. (And by the way, we built
MetaBright in Ruby!)

Thanks!

I liked the site a lot! I'd say my biggest piece of feedback is that
there needs to be a steady stream of new questions coming in. I
completed all the 'arena' questions pretty quickly. When do you think
you'll have more stuff posted?

I've tried creating some questions on the site, but I can't figure out 
how to put newlines in, which destroys the readability of the code 
samples I was using to create questions.
Any chance of sorting that issue out?

Donald: Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it! We post new questions
occasionally to the Challenges, but are really looking to our users to
create questions that they think are good indicators of competence.
We're still playing with the best way to incentivize question creation
while ensuring the overall quality of the content, but right now, once
you achieve 300 points in a Challenge, you can publish questions. And as
you publish high-quality questions, you have the opportunity to earn
more points. So if you've already passed 300 points, we'd certainly love
it if you'd submit some questions!

Joel: Thank you for submitting some really awesome responses (I
especially loved this one:
http://www.metabright.com/paths/rubyonrails/submission/262) and for
attempting to publish some questions! We have to resolve a small Git
issue before we can push new changes. But yes, as soon as we're able to,
we'll submit a push that allows for some basic formatting in the
question field that will also include the ability to place line breaks.
I'll post here again when we get it live.

And by the way, thank you for taking the initiative to try and create
your own Challenge! The flow is pretty janky right now, but we're
working on making it cleaner.

Thanks for looking into it, I like the concept.
By the way, the "optional" image when creating a challenge isn't 
optional. Might be worth changing either the description or the code 
there.

Looks like someone fixed the lines issue.
Now it looks as though my challenge isn't published? I've tried to 
unpublish & republish, but it won't let me as it's the only one I've 
made.

Yep, just recently pushed changes to fix the spacing issue!

All Challenges that get created have to be approved by an admin. (Sorry 
this message wasn't communicated when you were creating the challenge -- 
it was originally an admin-only tool, until, well, two days ago.) We 
just approved your Challenge, and moved it into the Hacker Persona.

You can check it out here: 
http://www.metabright.com/challenges/basicclasstest

Thanks. No worries about the misunderstanding, I know it's all still 
under construction :)

If you're wondering about the image I used, it's a screenshot of Bloons 
TD 5... The first image I found when testing the challenge builder :p

I knew it looked familiar! I have an unhealthy addiction with the entire 
Bloons franchise

Good man! I even bought the Deluxe version of BTD5 :)

One idea you might find useful: Allow timer adjustment on the quiz 
section. Some of the questions I wrote seem a bit fiendish given the 
speed of the timer.

its interesting, but that i need to be registerd is anovying

Ha! I would have found your Challenge fiendish no matter how much time I 
had! Allowing the timer to be adjusted on a per question basis is 
something we're definitely going to do. Possibly along with the options 
of not having the countdown penalize the users' scores, and disabling 
the timer entirely.

Hi, Hans. Sorry that you found the registration annoying. We felt it was 
important that people use their real identities, and having a social 
sign-in was the easiest way to encourage this. While this choice 
certainly turns off some people, we felt it would facilitate a healthier 
community for the people who did chose to sign up. So thank you for 
choosing to register, and I hope you enjoy the platform.

you cant make a test without register, so you cant see if its worth to 
do it

on this world there exist some beings that are proud of their "unsocial" 
skills :P ...

for sample what if i dont want that everyone can see my score?
what if i dont want to be sourced?

and PS: this orange layer on the left side, it does not fit into my 
window, i cant see what is written there

We thought it was important for scores and submissions to be visible to
everyone. (A little bit about our philosophy can be found here:
www.metabright.com/about) There are always opportunities to improve your
score if you're unsatisfied with your current point total. More
important than the number of points you earn are the responses you
submit because we think these are a better demonstrator of people's
growth and abilities. If you'd prefer for none of this to be visible,
unfortunately the only thing I can suggest is to delete your account.
You can do so by editing your profile, and clicking the "Remove Account"
button.

Hans Mackowiak wrote in post #1094804:
> its interesting, but that i need to be registerd is anovying

Anonymity and community don't go well together:
http://calacanis.com/2009/01/29/we-live-in-public-...
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26837911/ns/health-behav...

In any case, the addictive nature of the "achievement" system is a great 
way to get website traffic. And remember, if something is free, then 
you're the commodity!

Nice Site! I like it.

Great way to improve oneself.

Joel: I agree with your post. Thanks for sharing those articles. I 
especially liked the Calacanis piece -- I'm going to start using his 
term, IAS. I do believe that the Internet is becoming less anonymous 
because people value real connections (connections that can be tied back 
to the physical world), and that this is a *good* thing.

Karthik: I'm thrilled you're enjoying it!

Nathaniel Sokoll-Ward wrote in post #1094846:
> Joel: I agree with your post. Thanks for sharing those articles. I
> especially liked the Calacanis piece -- I'm going to start using his
> term, IAS. I do believe that the Internet is becoming less anonymous
> because people value real connections (connections that can be tied back
> to the physical world), and that this is a *good* thing.

As an Aspie myself, I often find it difficult to identify with people 
unless we share an interest. Networking sites are a useful way to link 
via interests rather than proximity or random chance :)

Amen! I always find that my lasting relationships are the ones where we 
share similar interests as opposed to shared experiences. And in the 
social networking sphere, I think that's why services like Google+ 
resonates much more with me than say, Facebook.