A bit over a year ago, mid-November of 2007, James Gray announced he was retiring as the Ruby Quiz master. He had run the quiz for nearly three years, a wonderful achievement enjoyed by many Rubyists here.
Almost a year ago, mid-February of 2008, I began an attempt to follow in his footsteps. Sad to say, though, I only lasted about 10 months. As of now, I need to retire from running the Ruby Quiz.
When I started, I had made some changes in my personal life (incl. quitting my job) that allowed me the time to write up quizzes and summaries every week. However, nearly a year later, my personal circumstances have changed again, and I will be unable to dedicate the time necessary to run further Ruby Quizzes. Some of this has already manifested by way of skipped weeks and late quizzes/submissions.
Hopefully, I've done reasonably well following James' incredible effort. I also hope that, perhaps, there will be another quizmaster to take up from where I left off. I certainly hope so; I may not be able to run the quiz any longer, but I'd still love to participate in some of the lighter quizzes to follow.
Apologies to everyone that I must step down, but also many thanks to everyone for participating and making RQ2 very enjoyable.
-- Matthew Moss
P.S. For those who would consider taking the reigns, I can provide the Ruby scripts (cgi, not Rails) used to run the current site at <http://splatbang.com/rubyquiz/
···
. As for hosting, I am open to several possibilities.
I wish I had time to take over, but I want to say that I appreciate your
effort! I hope someone will pick this up because I like reading the
Ruby Quiz!
···
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 08:37:31AM +0900, Matthew Moss wrote:
Sorry for the dorky subject line...
A bit over a year ago, mid-November of 2007, James Gray announced he was
retiring as the Ruby Quiz master. He had run the quiz for nearly three
years, a wonderful achievement enjoyed by many Rubyists here.
Almost a year ago, mid-February of 2008, I began an attempt to follow in
his footsteps. Sad to say, though, I only lasted about 10 months. As of
now, I need to retire from running the Ruby Quiz.
Thanks for running the quiz, you did a great job !!
I've always enjoyed the quiz even though most of the time I didn't
have enough time to work on a solution (two little kids take too much
of my free time). When I did have the time I enjoyed it a lot. I hope
somebody will take over so we can give continuity to this great asset
of the Ruby community. Unfortunately I don't have the time or
knoweldge to run this kind of thing...
So again thanks for running the quiz.
Jesus.
···
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 12:37 AM, Matthew Moss <matt@moss.name> wrote:
Almost a year ago, mid-February of 2008, I began an attempt to follow in his
footsteps. Sad to say, though, I only lasted about 10 months. As of now, I
need to retire from running the Ruby Quiz.
How about a 'quiz' group with a group leader rather than a single quizmaster. Suppose there are n people in the group. Each person then is responsible for at least a quiz every n weeks (if you want to continue weekly). The group leader maintains any pool of additional quizzes that come in for lean weeks where a quiz might be missing, and determines which quiz from the group gets shoved out each week.. or even go to monthly quizzes?
Seems a more sustainable/scalable approach.
Ron.
Matthew Moss wrote:
···
Sorry for the dorky subject line...
A bit over a year ago, mid-November of 2007, James Gray announced he was retiring as the Ruby Quiz master. He had run the quiz for nearly three years, a wonderful achievement enjoyed by many Rubyists here.
Almost a year ago, mid-February of 2008, I began an attempt to follow in his footsteps. Sad to say, though, I only lasted about 10 months. As of now, I need to retire from running the Ruby Quiz.
When I started, I had made some changes in my personal life (incl. quitting my job) that allowed me the time to write up quizzes and summaries every week. However, nearly a year later, my personal circumstances have changed again, and I will be unable to dedicate the time necessary to run further Ruby Quizzes. Some of this has already manifested by way of skipped weeks and late quizzes/submissions.
Hopefully, I've done reasonably well following James' incredible effort. I also hope that, perhaps, there will be another quizmaster to take up from where I left off. I certainly hope so; I may not be able to run the quiz any longer, but I'd still love to participate in some of the lighter quizzes to follow.
Apologies to everyone that I must step down, but also many thanks to everyone for participating and making RQ2 very enjoyable.
-- Matthew Moss
P.S. For those who would consider taking the reigns, I can provide the Ruby scripts (cgi, not Rails) used to run the current site at <http://splatbang.com/rubyquiz/ >. As for hosting, I am open to several possibilities.
--
Ron Fox
NSCL
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1321
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 5:07 AM, Matthew Moss <matt@moss.name> wrote:
Sorry for the dorky subject line...
A bit over a year ago, mid-November of 2007, James Gray announced he was
retiring as the Ruby Quiz master. He had run the quiz for nearly three
years, a wonderful achievement enjoyed by many Rubyists here.
Almost a year ago, mid-February of 2008, I began an attempt to follow in his
footsteps. Sad to say, though, I only lasted about 10 months. As of now, I
need to retire from running the Ruby Quiz.
Well, I never did get into the sort of quiz habit that I always wanted to develop, but I did enjoy reading the submissions and summaries. Thank you both James and Matt!
As for the future of the Ruby quiz, what about a rotating quizmaster? I've never done this with a programming quiz, but it's worked in other weekly/periodic challenge situations I've been involved in before. The idea would be that a quiz would go out along with some criteria: least lines of code, quickest runtime, smallest memory footprint, best use of blocks, etc. Then, when the submission come in, the participants vote on who "won" the quiz, and that person then becomes the quiz master for the next week.
Assuming we all have GitHub accounts, we could even start a public project with quiz descriptions, solution validation tests, best and runner-up solutions, summaries and whatnot. Then, each new week's quizmaster could fork the project and add the new quiz.
I wish I had more time to help with this myself (maybe in 6-8 months I could), but I thought I'd throw the idea out there and see what people think...
My personal experience with groups on the Internet is that they generally don't work for a situation such as this. It takes a certain amount of hard work and dedication to keep things going; the usual result is one or two people doing most of the work anyway, but also spending time badgering or attempting to motivate the others with little success. It is often difficult enough to find one dedicated person... but finding a group of them?
That said, I am certainly not against a group of people contributing to Ruby Quiz, but really... as I will not be running it anymore, that would be left to the quizmaster (i.e. "group leader") who follows me. If he can find a group of N people who each regularly contribute a quiz every N-th week, more power to him and them. But you still need someone -- a group leader, as you say -- to manage the whole.
Likewise, it may be an easier task to do quizzes only monthly, or every other week. I certainly have skipped weeks when I was behind schedule or overburdened. Again, that's a detail that my successor(s) can set either as the rule or the exception.
···
On Jan 15, 2009, at 4:49 AM, Ron Fox wrote:
How about a 'quiz' group with a group leader rather than a single quizmaster. Suppose there are n people in the group. Each person then is responsible for at least a quiz every n weeks (if you want to continue weekly). The group leader maintains any pool of additional quizzes that come in for lean weeks where a quiz might be missing, and determines which quiz from the group gets shoved out each week.. or even go to monthly quizzes?
can also give it a try if no volunteer is found, to run the weekly quiz. As
long as I am not expected to solve the quiz myself (remember, I am a light
weight Ruby learner) I would be happy to feel the vacuum until someone more
experience takes it over.
Regards,
···
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Ron Fox <fox@nscl.msu.edu> wrote:
How about a 'quiz' group with a group leader rather than a single
quizmaster. Suppose there are n people in the group. Each person then is
responsible for at least a quiz every n weeks (if you want to continue
weekly). The group leader maintains any pool of additional quizzes that
come in for lean weeks where a quiz might be missing, and determines which
quiz from the group gets shoved out each week.. or even go to monthly
quizzes?
Seems a more sustainable/scalable approach.
Ron.
Matthew Moss wrote:
Sorry for the dorky subject line...
A bit over a year ago, mid-November of 2007, James Gray announced he was
retiring as the Ruby Quiz master. He had run the quiz for nearly three
years, a wonderful achievement enjoyed by many Rubyists here.
Almost a year ago, mid-February of 2008, I began an attempt to follow in
his footsteps. Sad to say, though, I only lasted about 10 months. As of
now, I need to retire from running the Ruby Quiz.
When I started, I had made some changes in my personal life (incl.
quitting my job) that allowed me the time to write up quizzes and
summaries every week. However, nearly a year later, my personal
circumstances have changed again, and I will be unable to dedicate the
time necessary to run further Ruby Quizzes. Some of this has already
manifested by way of skipped weeks and late quizzes/submissions.
Hopefully, I've done reasonably well following James' incredible effort.
I also hope that, perhaps, there will be another quizmaster to take up from
where I left off. I certainly hope so; I may not be able to run the quiz
any longer, but I'd still love to participate in some of the lighter
quizzes to follow.
Apologies to everyone that I must step down, but also many thanks to
everyone for participating and making RQ2 very enjoyable.
-- Matthew Moss
P.S. For those who would consider taking the reigns, I can provide the
Ruby scripts (cgi, not Rails) used to run the current site at < http://splatbang.com/rubyquiz/ >. As for hosting, I am open to several
possibilities.
--
Ron Fox
NSCL
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1321
Although I am just a Ruby Apprentice, I like the idea of a "quiz group". I
Sorry Matthew if I let some of our private discussions out here but I
believe it is the best for the group :).
Anyway
You did a tremendous job. (And who could argue with James on this
matter anyway!)
But it is interesting to note that we had quite some discussions and I
really did favor the group approach. However your determination and
the slow progress of the group approach made it clear to the others
that it would be you, and it was really just fine like that.
That said I really would like the group approach to happen. In the
meantime I might come up with one or two quiz ideas I was brooding
about, maybe not for tomorrow but who knows.
The first resumes would be temprorarily on my blog before we can come
up with something more suitable.
Maybe we could simply start a Rubyforge project RubyQuiz3, "Standing
at the shoulders of Giants" :)))
Tom do you read us here? (or whoever is responsible )
All opinions welcome of course.
I'd love that approach and I really would like to be a member rather
than the leader.
However I love Ruby Quiz too much to leave the leader job vacant for long.
Pleeease volunteer somebody, until than I can try to keep the idea
alive. I have asked for a Rubyforge project *now*. That means that I
will pass over the maintainer role to any volunteers as soon as the
project is approved.
*** This shall not discourage other approaches to Ruby Quiz, I just
felt that action was necessary to keep RQ alive ***
Cheers
Robert
···
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Ron Fox <fox@nscl.msu.edu> wrote:
How about a 'quiz' group with a group leader rather than a single
quizmaster. Suppose there are n people in the group. Each person then is
responsible for at least a quiz every n weeks (if you want to continue
weekly). The group leader maintains any pool of additional quizzes that
come in for lean weeks where a quiz might be missing, and determines which
quiz from the group gets shoved out each week.. or even go to monthly
quizzes?
Well I believe that Ruby quizzes should be fun and not a competition,
and for I know up to know most people seem to agree with this. Speak
up the others thoug.
But if you like competitive quizzes than a RQTeam should surely have
some place for them too, maybe more people like that than some of us
think?
I also like James' idea of having different quizzes, for that we need
a team of course.
I was also wondering if a facebook group (secret to avoid spoilers)
would be a good working tool for a RQTeam.
I have created such a group and will gladly invite whoever is
interested. Just drop a mail or a message on Facebook.
And as for the Ruby Forge project I am looking for a leader ....
Cheers
Robert
···
On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Joshua Ballanco <jballanc@gmail.com> wrote:
Well, I never did get into the sort of quiz habit that I always wanted to
develop, but I did enjoy reading the submissions and summaries. Thank you
both James and Matt!
As for the future of the Ruby quiz, what about a rotating quizmaster? I've
never done this with a programming quiz, but it's worked in other
weekly/periodic challenge situations I've been involved in before. The idea
would be that a quiz would go out along with some criteria: least lines of
code, quickest runtime, smallest memory footprint, best use of blocks, etc.
Then, when the submission come in, the participants vote on who "won" the
quiz, and that person then becomes the quiz master for the next week.
--
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the
dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any
longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but
the world as it will be ... ~ Isaac Asimov
I also think that more people would get involve if the quiz is given once
and no more than twice/month.
···
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Ruby Student <ruby.student@gmail.com>wrote:
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Ron Fox <fox@nscl.msu.edu> wrote:
How about a 'quiz' group with a group leader rather than a single
quizmaster. Suppose there are n people in the group. Each person then is
responsible for at least a quiz every n weeks (if you want to continue
weekly). The group leader maintains any pool of additional quizzes that
come in for lean weeks where a quiz might be missing, and determines which
quiz from the group gets shoved out each week.. or even go to monthly
quizzes?
Seems a more sustainable/scalable approach.
Ron.
Matthew Moss wrote:
Sorry for the dorky subject line...
A bit over a year ago, mid-November of 2007, James Gray announced he was
retiring as the Ruby Quiz master. He had run the quiz for nearly three
years, a wonderful achievement enjoyed by many Rubyists here.
Almost a year ago, mid-February of 2008, I began an attempt to follow in
his footsteps. Sad to say, though, I only lasted about 10 months. As of
now, I need to retire from running the Ruby Quiz.
When I started, I had made some changes in my personal life (incl.
quitting my job) that allowed me the time to write up quizzes and
summaries every week. However, nearly a year later, my personal
circumstances have changed again, and I will be unable to dedicate the
time necessary to run further Ruby Quizzes. Some of this has already
manifested by way of skipped weeks and late quizzes/submissions.
Hopefully, I've done reasonably well following James' incredible effort.
I also hope that, perhaps, there will be another quizmaster to take up from
where I left off. I certainly hope so; I may not be able to run the quiz
any longer, but I'd still love to participate in some of the lighter
quizzes to follow.
Apologies to everyone that I must step down, but also many thanks to
everyone for participating and making RQ2 very enjoyable.
-- Matthew Moss
P.S. For those who would consider taking the reigns, I can provide the
Ruby scripts (cgi, not Rails) used to run the current site at < http://splatbang.com/rubyquiz/ >. As for hosting, I am open to several
possibilities.
--
Ron Fox
NSCL
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1321
Although I am just a Ruby Apprentice, I like the idea of a "quiz group". I
can also give it a try if no volunteer is found, to run the weekly quiz. As
long as I am not expected to solve the quiz myself (remember, I am a light
weight Ruby learner) I would be happy to feel the vacuum until someone more
experience takes it over.
Regards,
--
Ruby Student
Likewise, it may be an easier task to do quizzes only monthly, or
every other week.
I personally think a group of quiz masters would necessarily result in
a greater variation of "quizzes" which would probably make more people
interested in solving the quiz. IMHO a weekly quiz would be better
suited to maintain a general interest. This would probably be easier
to achieve for a group (2+) of quiz masters. You're right though that
such a group would still need somebody who carries the one ring to
bind then all.
Many thanks for your time and effort you put into the ruby quiz. I
always found it quite interesting to follow the discussion & read the
summary.
update:
Sorry folks it's 3am and I should probably go to bed...
What about relaunching one or two of the old Ruby Quizzes that might
have considerable different solutions in Ruby1.9. That might fill the
gap for one or two weeks.
James, Matthew would that be fine with you? Any ideas, maybe Ara's
metakoans, they were just crying for block parameters in blocks IIRC.
But it is interesting to note that we had quite some discussions and I
really did favor the group approach. However your determination and
the slow progress of the group approach made it clear to the others
that it would be you, and it was really just fine like that.
And this is why I am asking for a new quizmaster now.
There needs to be someone who will drive the project; otherwise, little gets done. When you have a motivated leader, only then can you determine how any sort of group dynamic will function.
I haven't done Ruby Quiz in a while, but when I did, a big draw for me was making it an important part of my week. If you made it once or twice a month, all that would accomplish is that no-one would form a "Ruby Quiz habit" as I did.
···
________________________________
From: Ruby Student <ruby.student@gmail.com>
To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 8:48:43 AM
Subject: Re: Quizmaster Retiring: Revenge of the Sith
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Ruby Student <ruby.student@gmail.com>wrote:
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Ron Fox <fox@nscl.msu.edu> wrote:
How about a 'quiz' group with a group leader rather than a single
quizmaster. Suppose there are n people in the group. Each person then is
responsible for at least a quiz every n weeks (if you want to continue
weekly). The group leader maintains any pool of additional quizzes that
come in for lean weeks where a quiz might be missing, and determines which
quiz from the group gets shoved out each week.. or even go to monthly
quizzes?
Seems a more sustainable/scalable approach.
Ron.
Matthew Moss wrote:
Sorry for the dorky subject line....
A bit over a year ago, mid-November of 2007, James Gray announced he was
retiring as the Ruby Quiz master. He had run the quiz for nearly three
years, a wonderful achievement enjoyed by many Rubyists here.
Almost a year ago, mid-February of 2008, I began an attempt to follow in
his footsteps. Sad to say, though, I only lasted about 10 months. As of
now, I need to retire from running the Ruby Quiz.
When I started, I had made some changes in my personal life (incl.
quitting my job) that allowed me the time to write up quizzes and
summaries every week. However, nearly a year later, my personal
circumstances have changed again, and I will be unable to dedicate the
time necessary to run further Ruby Quizzes. Some of this has already
manifested by way of skipped weeks and late quizzes/submissions.
Hopefully, I've done reasonably well following James' incredible effort.
I also hope that, perhaps, there will be another quizmaster to take up from
where I left off. I certainly hope so; I may not be able to run the quiz
any longer, but I'd still love to participate in some of the lighter
quizzes to follow.
Apologies to everyone that I must step down, but also many thanks to
everyone for participating and making RQ2 very enjoyable.
-- Matthew Moss
P.S. For those who would consider taking the reigns, I can provide the
Ruby scripts (cgi, not Rails) used to run the current site at < http://splatbang.com/rubyquiz/ >. As for hosting, I am open to several
possibilities.
--
Ron Fox
NSCL
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1321
Although I am just a Ruby Apprentice, I like the idea of a "quiz group". I
can also give it a try if no volunteer is found, to run the weekly quiz. As
long as I am not expected to solve the quiz myself (remember, I am a light
weight Ruby learner) I would be happy to feel the vacuum until someone more
experience takes it over.
Regards,
--
Ruby Student
I also think that more people would get involve if the quiz is given once
and no more than twice/month.
Ok of all the people who are commenting i am perhaps the least
qualified coz i never solved one on my own, but i think this is the
best time to tell people what has been on my mind for a very long
time. But first let me make it clear that i am in no state right now
to take voluteering for what i am suggesting.
I do not know the particular history & culture of quizzes (i say
quizzes because i know about python and perl quiz) but i find it very
common that most of them are like for the stack of people just above
the intermediate level(correct me if its wrong). Nobody seems to be
bothered about those learners just who have just understood the
syntax, conventions and philosophy of ruby. While the quizzes are
great they are of little value for such people (who actually are the
most in need). I always maintained that the best way to learn the
solution is to actually solve the problem. Now i propose that apart
from the regular quiz section we have, we also start a beginner quiz.
You know like quizzes intended for people who are just learning tho
ropes.
I know many of you think that it would be unlikely (specially now that
we lack a proper quiz master altogether) to have something like this.
But think about all those beginners who are left gasping for breath
when they read the first quiz.
···
On Jan 15, 7:20 am, Tom Link <micat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Likewise, it may be an easier task to do quizzes only monthly, or
> every other week.
I personally think a group of quiz masters would necessarily result in
a greater variation of "quizzes" which would probably make more people
interested in solving the quiz. IMHO a weekly quiz would be better
suited to maintain a general interest. This would probably be easier
to achieve for a group (2+) of quiz masters. You're right though that
such a group would still need somebody who carries the one ring to
bind then all.
Many thanks for your time and effort you put into the ruby quiz. I
always found it quite interesting to follow the discussion & read the
summary.
I don't have the time to actually *run* a quiz, but if someone wants
quiz problems I can happily supply them.
martin
···
On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 7:27 AM, Robert Dober <robert.dober@gmail.com> wrote:
update:
Sorry folks it's 3am and I should probably go to bed...
What about relaunching one or two of the old Ruby Quizzes that might
have considerable different solutions in Ruby1.9. That might fill the
gap for one or two weeks.
James, Matthew would that be fine with you? Any ideas, maybe Ara's
metakoans, they were just crying for block parameters in blocks IIRC.
