
Exercism.io – Become a better programmer - Reddichu
http://educationware.net/exercism-io-become-a-better-programmer/
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aeykie
You know what'd be a cool website/application? A front end to all these
'learn-to-code' things. Like how Mint is a front end to multiple bank's
websites I could have one account that interfaces into project euler,
rosalind, exercism, etc grabs exercises and checks them.

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wongarsu
For anybody who wants to take a look at the types of exercises they have: all
the exercises are on github [1]

[1]
[https://github.com/exercism/x-common](https://github.com/exercism/x-common)

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llamataboot
exercism.io has been an amazing tool to improve my Ruby skills (I can't speak
to any other languages yet) although it seems that nitpicks have become a bit
on the light side lately.

I'd challenge anyone to pick a language they are semi-comfortable in or a
brand new-language and do a month of exercism exercises, refactoring as you
get comments, and then moving onto the next exercise.

Even 15 minutes of code practice a day goes a long way.

~~~
llamataboot
and I should say, don't forget to critique your peers' code as well (gently
and respectfully) as the site points out, reading and critiquing code is just
as useful practice in getting better at coding as writing code.

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masters3d
I practically learned Swift by doing the first available exercises. (12 or so)
when I ran out of exercises I started to implement new ones by taking the test
cases from the ruby track (most similar to Apple's XCTest). Check out the
available tracks [http://synopsis.exercism.io/](http://synopsis.exercism.io/)
Next I am exited about practicing Rust!

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placeybordeaux
What is up with this blog spam? Especially with that link to yet another
bookmarking site at the bottom...

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omgtehlion
Download some blob from the internet, then run it?

No, thanks

~~~
kytrinyx
Fair enough. You can also build the binary yourself, since it's all open
source.
[https://github.com/exercism/cli/releases](https://github.com/exercism/cli/releases)

~~~
omgtehlion
Looks like it just downloads/uploads plain data to the web service. I thought
that in this age of internet technologies a web site would be enough.

~~~
MadcapJake
What about curl, wget, httpie?

Or how about lynx or w3m?

Plenty of people want to utilize CLIs and it's definitely beneficial when
learning to program to get as much experience on a command line as possible.

~~~
wongarsu
Yes, but what's the value in this website having a dedicated application that
I either have to trust blindly or evaluate and compile?

We already have this great sandboxed environment called a browser for running
untrusted code from the internet. They could still offer endpoints for curl,
if it's just about using the command line.

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sergiotapia
Extremely confusing website, are the exercises somewhere on the website or do
I need to download an application or are the exercises on Github or what?

The screenshots make it look like CodeAcademy with messages/comments, but I
can't find the exercises anywhere.

~~~
yellowapple
If you're just interested in the exercises without all the code review
shenanigans that the site + CLI tool offer, they're all available on
[https://github.com/exercism](https://github.com/exercism) (all the ones named
`x$language`).

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fallat
You know, at first I found this was really good, but after trying it for a
little I just completely forgot about it. Is it as good as everyone says? From
the comments so far it makes me want to try it out again.

~~~
RadioactiveMan
I really enjoyed it. It was pretty fun to see everyone else's submissions and
read their comments. I also like the command-line interface. No GUI or web
garbage to muck with to fetch or submit exercises.

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sinatra
When I saw that you expected users to join with their GitHub accounts, I
assumed that the exercises would be made available on GitHub and the
submissions would also happen through GitHub (on a user specified repo).

~~~
ics
You can find the exercises on GitHub (see
[https://github.com/exercism/xhaskell](https://github.com/exercism/xhaskell)
for example). They have their own workflow for the review process ("nitpicks"
and "iterations") which _could_ be grafted onto GitHub issues and pull
requests, but it's not necessary and might just make beginners more self
conscious about their stuff being open to anyone on GitHub.

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menzoic
whats the purpose of a desktop app for this?

~~~
kytrinyx
The CLI is easier to integrate into a normal development workflow, than
clicking buttons, dragging files, or copy/pasting code to get the code into
the browser.

I guess this supposes that "normal" means somewhere near the command-line,
which might not be true for all developers.

