Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#261

Post by pksebben » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #84

Animats wrote: post #45

These people are now better known among people likely to hire webmasters than whomever won the competition. The students did not violate the rules. The rules say that template sites like Wix, GitHub, etc. may not be used. They did not say "such as" GitHub. There's a difference. GitHub is merely illustrative of the template site concept, in this case incorrectly. The controlling requirement is that it be a "template s…

>They did not say "such as" GitHub. But that's what they said. https://tsaweb.org/docs/default-source/themes-and-problems-2...

Holy cow. They did say that.

We're doomed. If this is how we introduce kids to tech, we can guarantee they bail and do something more intellectually rewarding, like Business Admin or Sales /s

For real though, a similar thing nearly happened to me. over a decade ago I took a community college class CS101 - and it was taught by a guy with no knowledge and no investment (and they got you started with Java, of all things). Totally killed my interest. Fast forward to three years ago and I was lucky enough to find my way into the field through self-study, but quite nearly gave up on the whole thing forever because of a pug-ugly initial experience. And this was way after high school.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#262

Post by brk » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #254

brk wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree. It bans templating engines and gives some examples of sites but I do not believe those are 100% inclusive examples.

Microsoft also has some web template code. Should that disqualify all use of any Microsoft product?

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#263

Post by peterkelly » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 3:54 PM UTC

Bean0_0 wrote: post #255

peterkelly wrote: post #28

This 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.

If you do go ahead with this, I'd be willing to act as a judge and help out generally with advice. My contact details are in my profile.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#264

Post by jrm4 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 3:54 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #28

This 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…

You're putting it mildly.

Hey kids (and everyone else) if you're even remotely familiar with tech and you don't stay completely siloed in one space - very extremely frequently you will encounter people "above you" in the chain who are comparatively complete idiots re tech.

You will have to think carefully about how to proceed when you discover this, it's going to be a constant and consistent question of -- "at this stage, is it worth it for me to press this?"

Try not to get discouraged.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#265

Post by mschaef » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 3:56 PM UTC

DocTomoe wrote: post #69

themoonisachees wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are fooling yourself if you think libreoffice has feature parity with ms office, and gimp with Photoshop. Gimp doesn't even have feature parity with krita.

I have never, in 20 years in the business world - and that includes long years working closely with people in controlling - see anyone do something in Excel that could not be achieved in LibreOffice with similar effort. Yes, there is no 100% feature parity. But there is feature parity in the things that people actually use.

> - see anyone do something in Excel that could not be achieved in LibreOffice with similar effort. > Yes, there is no 100% feature parity. But there is feature parity in the things that people actually use.

It's not close to being wholly about the capability of the product itself.

Excel has the incumbency advantage - more people are familiar with it and more people already have it. Switching to LibreOffice therefore often means switching to a tool you don't know as well and then living with interop issues with your co-workers that are still on Excel. For LibreOffice (or any other competitor) to do something with "similar effort", it has to overcome those headwinds.

If you look at the history of spreadsheets, there is a long history of "better" products coming along, but only a few that were good enough to be able to displace the incumbent.

* VisiCalc - The First

* Lotus 1-2-3 - Runs on the PC, has graphics, and a bunch more capacity than VisiCalc

* Excel - GUI support

* Google Sheets (maybe) - Online real-time collaboration, etc.

There were many others along the way, and many of them could make the same claim you're making here about LibreOffice. (Multiplan, Improv, WingZ, Quattro Pro, Framework, etc.....)

Parity is ok, but the goal really has to be 'so much better that it justifies all of the switching costs'....

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#266

Post by teaearlgraycold » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

LanceH wrote: post #258

butterfi wrote: post #245

It’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…

Results are final means they’re too insecure to admit fallibility

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#267

Post by prepend » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #28

This 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…

I like this approach and is one reason I’m cynical about organizations that run these types of events where the staff have no practical knowledge. There’s an industry of consultants who run challenges and hackathons and I’ve been surprised when organizations spend $100k on consultants to give our $1k in prizes or something.

The fact that this challenge doesn’t have a decision maker who knows that GitHub can host as well as template sites and differentiate between the two is a good sign of incompetence.

It’s so cool that kids are doing these challenges and I wish they didn’t have to get cynical and review the challenge before participating. One thing I look for is who is on the review committee or board. If it’s people with good backgrounds, that’s a good sign. If it’s faceless or people with no background in the topic, then I advise avoiding.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#268

Post by dotancohen » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #172

Credit to those kids. School should be ashamed of themselves for that teacher’s inability to understand the nuance of the rule and more importantly work with and advocate for those kids. The teachers role never should be adversarial. That being said, the cynic in me sees the “Technology Students Association” as a massive grift that would make the College Board blush and these competitions are simply college app paddi…

  > The teachers role never should be adversarial.

This is, very often, the root of so many problems that I've seen.

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#269

Post by some_random » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 4:01 PM UTC

jame-se wrote: post #246

some_random wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don't know why the person enforcing the most extreme interpretation of a rule without any interest in hearing why they might have made a mistake in order to disqualify a group of passionate young people from a competition they clearly worked hard for would get flak? Honestly, reading the replies to this post I'm relieved and surprised that you all didn't choose to go into Law Enforcement.

There are no reasonable people in law enforcement, they’re there to enforce the rules. Sometimes, you have to deal with unreasonable people and unreasonable rules, even if they’re wrong.

Yup, you're a natural born cop

Re: Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

#270

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #28

This 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…

[deleted]