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functional-koans / clojure-koans

A set of exercises for learning Clojure
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examples that are more friendly for a general audience #88

Closed elenam closed 9 years ago

elenam commented 9 years ago

ClojureBridge MN slightly modified some koans to avoid slang (e.g. foo/bar) and to use examples that more people can relate to. The koans are a great way to learn Clojure and worked really well for Track 2 of ClojureBridge (programmers with some experience).

reitzensteinm commented 9 years ago

I like the sentiment behind the changes, but a good patch would fix the issues while retaining the character of the original.

Jimmy,Jack,Joe -> Jimmy,Anna,Joe

Removes the alliteration. How about Jimmy,Jane,Joe?

Bob and Mike Smith -> Bob and Jennifer Smith?

Simple as possible names become simple and complex. Bob and Mary?

The playground song is a bit playful, and the oxford comma sentence is boring. Same with defcon->exercise velocity. Not sure I have a solution there.

elenam commented 9 years ago

The names changes that you are suggesting are good.

The defcon exercise is really confusing to someone who doesn't know the context and, taken out of such context, is inappropriate. We can replace it by something else, but, as is, it really would make it very awkward to use koans at workshops for beginners.

The playground song is less of an issue, but if we are making changes anyway, it may be good to replace it as well.

I am sure there are more creative alternatives than we are suggesting -- feel free to use something else.

We've used the modified koans at ClojureBridge. We haven't gotten through all (or even a half of) the koans, but have encouraged students to finish them on their own. It's nice to be able to do it and know that there isn't anything there that may make them uncomfortable.

Elena

On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 3:41 AM, reitzensteinm notifications@github.com wrote:

I like the sentiment behind the changes, but a good patch would fix the issues while retaining the character of the original.

Jimmy,Jack,Joe -> Jimmy,Anna,Joe

Removes the alliteration. How about Jimmy,Jane,Joe?

Bob and Mike Smith -> Bob and Jennifer Smith?

Simple as possible names become simple and complex. Bob and Mary?

The playground song is a bit playful, and the oxford comma sentence is boring. Same with defcon->exercise velocity. Not sure I have a solution there.

trptcolin commented 9 years ago

Thanks!

I'm going to go ahead and merge, and update the answer sheet as well so that lein koan test passes (this helps me make sure I haven't made a typo somewhere, provided I remember to actually run it before pushing).

I'll make the Anna -> Jane change here as well.

Agreed that we can improve the oxford comma sentence in a new PR.

reitzensteinm commented 9 years ago

Actually, I agree with you about Defcon, if you're not into techy humor it's just going to fall flat. I just mean that ideally it could be replaced with something that retains the fun, but for a general audience. LYAH did a great job of this.

However, until I bring a pull request that achieves this, my 2 cents are worth exactly that :)

elenam commented 9 years ago

Would Old McDonald song be an option, for either defcon or the Oxford comma? Any other good well-known kids poetry/stories? Sorry, I am not much of a help here personally since my English is non-native :-)