jlem
Lots of vague challenges, should be cleaned up to be specific - let's discuss them.
Challenges should have a very specific, measurable target that can be aimed for. While the challenge shouldn't impose a technology per-se (unless it's entire purpose is to challenge someone to do something in a specific technology), it should at least have some some boundaries/specifications.
Example:
- "Try a preprocessor like LESS, SASS or Stylus." might be converted to "Replicate the CSS of Digg.com by using Sass, Less, and Stylus". This gives you an exact target to aim for, and three specific tasks. Even then, it's easy to write pure CSS, in Sass, so an even more specific challenge that requires the use of Sass/Less/Stylus features would be better.
Many of the ones I initially added also need some more specific target context.
Not sure if it makes sense to discuss each one in its own issue, or just talk about them here.
Of course the challenges leave room for own ideas and can be done in different ways, but in my opinion that isn't a bad thing. These challenges should be attractive for developers who actually want to learn something about the technology inside the challenge (as you mentioned in your post, this is always the goal imo) and not the specific task that is described.
I agree with you that some tasks are not specific enough and could be misunderstood, but in general the task should only be a help to apply the technical challenge in a practical example.
Maybe have a list of general user stories would help? Like user auth/registration if the idea requires users or basic database queries/displaying results if relevant. Just throwing out ideas.
