Lack of convention about Dig Deeper

Exercism Building Exercism
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I recently noticed the dig deeper tab appearing around the website!
Officially announced 2-3 months ago.

But I have a few gripes about general its convention is.

Its reason for existing is crystal clear, but how would you go about contributing to an exercise’s Dig Deeper section?

There are three parts of Dig Deeper (From what I’ve inferred):

  1. Introduction (Introductory notes)
  2. Approaches
  3. Articles

Introduction:
Now this is the most confusing point for me, what is actually described in an introduction?

  • Potential directions for people learning to look into?
  • Looking into test hedge cases which their programs could be vulnerable to?
  • Contains the approaches and the articles explaining them (, or are they in separate files)?
  • All of the above?

Approaches:
Still not certain, but less confusion.

What should be contained in it:

  • Explaining how this approach is different from other ones or the typical approach.
  • Code representing the spirit of the approach.

But then again, confusion:

  • Is it in the introduction file, or only brief explanations of them in the introduction?
  • Is there another sub-directory containing files with the approaches, if so, how are they named?

Articles:
Same concerns about placement as Approaches.

Not really worried about the articles, but still placement is a problem.

So, know this is my first time I’m seriously considering contributing!

Its just I think clarification about this would be fantastic, sorry for taking up time.

2

This C# Leap Approaches has been shared as a “good example” of an approach. Or the C# Reverse String (linked from the Blog Post). I believe if you use one of those as a guide, you’ll be well off.

This can include all of the above:

  • general guidance about the exercise which is not specific to any one approach
    • I think it’s fine to include special cases to consider here, as well.
  • an optional “Which approach to use”

The approaches is (1) part of the introduction.md file where you include a summary of each approach along with a link to said approach. The approaches is also (2) a separate article for each approach.

  • The intro should have a brief summary of each approach.
  • The approach files should have code snippets and a deeper dive into the approach.
  • You can look at existing approaches (linked about) for file naming convention; each approach is another directory with a snippet.txt and content.md.

Take a look at some of the existing approaches files. That might help clarify matters. If anything is still unclear, please do ask questions!

1 Like
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Thank you for clarifying!
I really just wasn’t sure where to look for examples :sweat_smile:
Looking forward to contributing.
Happy new year!

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Just a heads up (which you probably already realize) to be sure to check if a Dig Deeper for an exercise has already been PR’d before starting one. I mention it because the Go track has about a dozen or so waiting for the maintainers to come off their holiday break.

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@Seven0492 If you need any more help, let me know!