Exercism V3 compatability?

[wolf99]

Interested to update this to the Exercism V3 spec for the config files?
From time to time I have use cases for which this tool is incredibly useful, but it does no work for the changed schema of the V3 track.

[jonmcalder]

Hi @wolf99! I'm happy to hear that this little tool is/was useful for you at some stage.

I'll take a look this evening and/or over the weekend to see what changes are required to handle config based on the Exercism V3 spec.

[iHiD]

Give @ErikSchierboom a ping if you need any help! :)

[jonmcalder]

@wolf99 Ok I've just deployed an updated version that accommodates config based on the V3 spec. Obviously quite a lot has changed with V3 so I've had to rework most of what existed before into something quite different.

I haven't really tested extensively and I'm sure there are edge-cases I haven't considered or encountered (especially given the WIP states of different tracks etc), but please give it a try and let me know if it's still useful and/or if there's anything that doesn't make sense.

I'm open to any feedback you have on what is / isn't useful and any suggestions you have for improvement.

The URL is the same as before: https://jonmcalder.shinyapps.io/exercism-config-viz/

[SaschaMann]

Thanks a lot for updating the tool!

I'm not sure how much you can influence that but for large configs, e.g. Elixir's, the graph ends up with intersections that manually need to be untangled.

One unified graph that shows which concept exercise/concept unlocks which practice exercise, and perhaps (optionally) which practice exercises practices that concept would be quite useful. In the same way that the v2 tool visualised the relation between core and unlocked_by exercises.

[jonmcalder]

@SaschaMann Thanks for the feedback!

I'm not sure how much you can influence that but for large configs, e.g. Elixir's, the graph ends up with intersections that manually need to be untangled.

Yes I'm aware of that problem (and it's the primary reason for making the node physics optional since it needs to be disabled if you want to reposition nodes manually and have them stay in place). There are lots of layout algorithms and options to fiddle with in the underlying javascript library but after giving it a try I decided it was a complete time-suck and was not likely to yield consistently better results in general due to the large variety of track scenarios. Having said that I have since revisited this and realised that I overlooked one of the available settings in the hierarchical layout options which does make a material difference so I will give that a try and push an update.

One unified graph that shows which concept exercise/concept unlocks which practice exercise, and perhaps (optionally) which practice exercises practices that concept would be quite useful. In the same way that the v2 tool visualised the relation between core and unlocked_by exercises.

I considered this briefly, but given the above layout problems I assumed it would require too much screen real estate and be too much of a mess to be useful. If I make progress with the layouts then I'll look into adding a unified view. With some of the larger tracks this might not scale well but I'm willing to give it a try.

and perhaps (optionally) which practice exercises practices that concept

Does the option to choose Selected By -> practices (when viewing the Practice Exercises tab) not fullfill this use-case? Or would you specifically want an option to see Concept Exercises mapped by their prerequisites and then mapped to Practice Exercises that practice each concept? I guess it's possible to add this - just complicates the UI / UX a little more than I'd like 😉

[SaschaMann]

Sounds good!

Does the option to choose Selected By -> practices (when viewing the Practice Exercises tab) not fullfill this use-case? Or would you specifically want an option to see Concept Exercises mapped by their prerequisites and then mapped to Practice Exercises that practice each concept?

It does, I was just curious what everything in one graph would look like. But it makes sense that it might end up too complicated and confusing :D

[wolf99]

Thank you so much Jon!
This has highlighted to me already that there are issues with the C track's curriculum that I'd like to correct 🙂

[junedev]

@wolf99 Can you describe which settings you use to identify issues? I struggle to find a view that reveals something for my track(s).