Many schools also block GitHub, Stack Overflow, Replit, and others on their networks while trying to promote STEM. Incredibly frustrating.
Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
251–260 of 329 posts
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#252Imagine having a US History important figure report contest. With a rule that forbid using anyone who was a US president. And someone uses Benjamin Franklin, and gets disqualified because someone on the rule committee thought "Franklin" was a US president.
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#253> Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files Github pages allows you to write index.md instead of an index.html, and therefore they count it as a webpage generator. Not sure if these kids used a markdown file for a page, but the capability is there and that makes Github more than just a dumb web server that serves html. Possibly the judges are non technical, jus…
They used GitHub pages as a dumb host for HTML files, JavaScript, images, CSS. Repo link in the story, here for convenience: https://github.com/thstsa/spacetourism Even has a .nojekyll file in the repo, and they since moved publishing to Netlify.
Sure. And I think you can host your own HTML/CSS/JS on Wix too.
It's reasonable to blacklist a whole range of solutions that contain the ability to be used as template engines and then insist the students use something else.
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That is very obviously not the case, seeing how they literally followed the rules. They followed the spirit of the rules rather than the letter, because Github was explicitly mentioned as one of the banned templating engines. Had they used an unlisted templating engine, they might have gotten away with it. Github obviously does not belong in that list, but to the busibodies at the contest, that's irrelevant.
Even if we assume that Github is a templating engine, you also have to recognize that it is also a content hosting platform. Hosting content on github does not in any way indicate that said content also came from github, or any other template package. This is yet another example of "authorities" making tech rulings without even a basic understanding of the technology they are trying to ban/permit/legislate/tax/etc.
Absolutely. The rule and enforcement of the rule are entirely stupid, but the rule does explicitly mention Github, and that does make this disqualification strictly according to the letter of the law, despite the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever. It's busibody bureaucrats exerting power over something they don't understand.
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#255This is one of those important events in life where you realise that sometimes those who hold seniority over you aren't necessarily as smart as you are. This experience will help you to cultivate a healthy disrespect for authority. We all go through something like this at some point. The best thing to do is to find some sort of constructive way to channel your experience. One path I would suggest is to consider launc…
That is a super good idea, some of our posts have taken off and we have even been contacted by the vp of developer relations for github. I'll contact the rest of the group and see what they think. Although, I do happen to know that fbla has a similar type contest to TSA so we might just move to that next year.
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#256It's extremely frustrating when people CHOOSE to not understand something. On the other hand, it's bad to assume that because "everyone uses it", it's OK. Having dealt with people who send code as HTML email with quotes replaced with "smart quotes", having been sent links to files / tarballs that don't actually link to those file / tarballs but to a web page instead, having been sent to sites that require knowing how…
One fallacy of web design, of any design, is that in order to be “good” it must be easy. Sometimes there is a learning curve. Conceptual hurdles abound with a complex tool like GitHub. Working through hurdles help you grow as a technologist and as person —but having the right attitude going in, that’s on you.
A contest isn't about teaching the people running the contest new tools. The contest is about different groups (or people) competing on a level playing field.
Also, nobody ever said that design can't be, or shouldn't be complex. But web hosting is simple. You put files in a directory and point a web server to them, and it just works. If it doesn't, that's a failing of the designers.
Complexity of design and complexity of delivery are two totally different things, and complexity of design has (or should have) absolutely nothing to do with complexity of delivery.
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#257As a former student that competed in both National and State TSA events from 2006 to 2012 (and won multiple trophies across events including the "webmaster" competition) I'm not really surprised by this outcome. That doesn't mean that its the right outcome but just a result of how these competitions are run. The judges are all volunteers that may or may not have a background in the actual event they are there to grad…
my understanding was that they were DQed for using github, not hosting there.
Which is just bananas. I can't think of a single decent piece of software that doesn't use Version Control, and 99.9999% of the software I know uses git for VC.
We need a new format. This institutional nonsense is for the birds.
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#258It’s disappointing how many comments here focus on the trees and not the forest. Regardless of the intent of the GitHub rule, this is supposed to drive interest in web development among young people, and instead it’s an exercise in bureaucracy and semantics.
The rule is ambiguous and can be read two ways.
Tools which pull code from places like ...github...are not allowed. # Github as a tool doesn't generate code.
Tool like ...github... which generate code are not allowed. # Github is certainly a repository from which code templates are pulled.
Love the "results are final". No flexibility from people running things is a great quality to prepare youth for the real world of navigating customer service.
Also the teacher telling them to just wait when they're the one who judged it.
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#259This is one of those important events in life where you realise that sometimes those who hold seniority over you aren't necessarily as smart as you are. This experience will help you to cultivate a healthy disrespect for authority. We all go through something like this at some point. The best thing to do is to find some sort of constructive way to channel your experience. One path I would suggest is to consider launc…
That is a super good idea, some of our posts have taken off and we have even been contacted by the vp of developer relations for github. I'll contact the rest of the group and see what they think. Although, I do happen to know that fbla has a similar type contest to TSA so we might just move to that next year.
>> The best thing to do is to find some sort of constructive way to channel your experience. One path I would suggest is to consider launching your own rival competition, where the judges are volunteers from industry, and the prize is an internship at a company or something like that. This would not only provide your peers with a great opportunity to get quality feedback, but also serve as a really useful experience that would help you in your future career. What have you got to lose?
Reading the replies to this comment saying "rules are rules" is honestly heart breaking. Where has the real spirit of innovation gone? The hacker ethics [0]?
> Although, I do happen to know that fbla has a similar type contest to TSA so we might just move to that next year.
It's your decision, but I say build your own. You've built an audience, already have outreach into the community and a good story.
Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
They used GitHub pages as a dumb host for HTML files, JavaScript, images, CSS. Repo link in the story, here for convenience: https://github.com/thstsa/spacetourism Even has a .nojekyll file in the repo, and they since moved publishing to Netlify.
Sure. And I think you can host your own HTML/CSS/JS on Wix too. It's reasonable to blacklist a whole range of solutions that contain the ability to be used as template engines and then insist the students use something else.
I don't think it's reasonable to blacklist the most popular VCS website used among developers. It's a competition for devs, they _should_ be using version control.
All it would take is a cursory glance by another dev to know if they used templating or not, which I would consider baseline for a developer contest.
The article says their teacher just seen it was on GitHub and disqualified them off the bat. Unreasonable imo