Page 3 - Beginner PHP Code Contest

I have feeling that many will try to cheat only because internet is made that way and they are geeks.

What would maybe work is a post-contenst.

IE: normal code contest that ends with one winner and best 100 places whose accounts are eligible to join the next contest.

This way this will be semi-beginner, and the winners can be classified, not really open for everyone.

The problem is that a winner is supposed to win something, and beginners contenst would mean not much to do toclean the house.

Maxim Maletsky
maxim@php.net
www.phpbeginner.com

I say you just run the contest, no prizes, and advertise it widely as a NEWBIE contest. Like someone said, i dont think experts would want to win a newbie contest...especially if it was publically announced.

Back to the topic. =)

I've been a programmer for 25+ years, but just picked up my first PHP book about two months ago. Would I be considered a newbie coder or just a newbie PHP coder? **GRIN** I'd never enter a beginner's contest just because I know I'd have at least SOME advantage having coded in many other languages in the past -- it's an honor system thing. I hope you do have a contest for beginner's I'd love to be involved with training and judging.

Well i've seen your 'work' (the unfinished crossword puzzle) and i don't think a beginner could do that...

Then comes the question where the lines lies between beginner and expert...

From my perspective the newbie category would be probably new to PHP.

Sure those who have been programming for a while will have advantages. But that's ok. I just bascially started this thread because I wanted to see if there could be some "simpler" puzzles to solve. To be honest I wouldn't even have an idea on where to start with the latest Crossworld Puzzle.

i agree with wilster, i think new to php is a good class for newbies. If there are going to be no prizes, who cares if an expert wins. I just want this newbie contest coz i like trying to solve puzzles, although i had no idea how you would even start that crossword puzzle thing.

One addition to the contest that I think would be of assistance to beginners would be if the contest winners could write a summary in plain English outlining and explaining their solution, that had to be at least half a page long. In fact, I think everyone (not just newbies) could learn from this. Perhaps this could be made a condition that the winners have to abide by in order to receive their prizes. ;)

One addition to the contest that I think would be of assistance to beginners would be if the contest winners could write a summary in plain English outlining and explaining their solution, that had to be at least half a page long. In fact, I think everyone (not just newbies) could learn from this. Perhaps this could be made a condition that the winners have to abide by in order to receive their prizes.

[Note: Please forgive me if this post shows up multiple times, this is the third time I've tried to put it through, but it didn't show up the first two times, which I _suspect_ is because the message originally contained a semicolon followed by a right bracket (i.e. a winking emoticon), a string which is potentially not being escaped by the forum's PHP code, but is instead being passed to underlying DB layer, thus causing a malformed query to be executed]

Whoops, please just ignore the post directly above this one, I didn't realise threads got split onto multiple pages if they had too many messages, which was why I was like "where did my message go?"
**slaps forehead**

Personally, and I don't know what you lot think, if I entered a 'newbie' competition - and I am(subject to debate of course) AND won, I'd take that as my Q to stop entering them. From a learning perspective the present contest seem kinda big and scary that I'd be dubious about doing to a good standard in a language that I have been learning for 2 years at uni.

Alan

I'll run a PHP Beginners Contest that will focus on building applications that could be used in real world situations. I'm sure that some of the ideas that I have are already created and being used. But I myself want to try to make some things that's i've been "needing" over the last year. Just things to make my life easier.

Matt: if you could contact me privately I would like to discuss some of the details with you and ask you questions about how you run your contest. - Thanks for your time.

Yeah I know that I'm probably not going to be able to weed out the "experts", but I'm hoping the fact that there will not be prizes that would help the "better" programmers from entering. All that I'm offering would be a little trophy graphic that would link to the contest page, and say that you won one of the contests.

Anyway, that's my idea. Please thrash it around a bit and let me see if it's viable

Take care.

Though, PHPBeginner.com is a perfect place for such contest, i still wouldn't go for it all on our own - we've got other things to do (we are a dozen of technical writers and got no time for this). Contests are time consuming and hard to start up, that is what i respect Matt's efforts so much for.

If i was about t ocollaborate with matt on it, I would do it via his experience.

Belive me if I say it (me, who teaches newbies for years) - wrking with the beinners is WAAAAY harder than working with the experts. Experts are clear and straight-forward type of programmers, while beginners are never-tired coders needing code samples and cleverly-written content. They are also different between themselves, coming from various backgounds, so, making a contest fo them is darn tough.

Just my 0.2 euro-cents.

hah, with me it's more like I can't seam to get anything useful done. but loads of times I figure out what would be weird but do-able in php, and then I sit down and write it

Myself, I would code my *** off for the glory ;) A beginner contest would be killer, but what makes you a beginner, and where goes the line? or even more important, who draws it?

now, there will be wrong to say "your not a newbie so this script is to good for this contest". that won't be ok at all..
its a problem, but such a contest should be based on trust.

i think if expert want to join the contest let them, theres no way you can stop them. I think you just have to rely on people being honest, even though that doesnt always work

Actually d1ngo, ur wrong there :p

If you set an expert userlevel and ste those you know are experts at it, but there it still a problem of multi accounts, which can be stopped by a 1 account per i.p system.

Then the only problem is judging newcomers as begginer or expert.