Tricky Triplets - a storified replacement for Two Fer

[kytrinyx]

Background

When we redesigned Exercism we gave each exercise its own icon. This made a huge difference. The tracks feel a lot more fun and approachable.

A common complaint about exercises is that they feel overwhelming or unapproachable or hard to understand. Often this is because there's too much jargon in the description. Other times it's because the domain is foreign to the reader.

Lately @iHiD, @nicolechalmers, and I have been discussing how we'd like every single exercise on Exercism to be fun and approachable, and we've been discussing how we might accomplish this.

Suggested solution

The approach that we think has a lot of merit is to ensure that each exercise has

1. an appealing icon
2. an inviting title
3. an engaging storyline

We aren't going to go all out just yet and mandate that every single exercise be transformed into a story, however we would very much like to talk about stories for any new exercises that are introduced.

Also, we are open to people proposing stories to either tweak or replace an existing exercise.

There will be a balance to strike with stories. We want to hit the goldilocks zone of "not to little" and "not too much". E.g. "two fer" is not quite enough, but we also don't want to have to invent a whole new alternate universe with magical laws and a complex cast of characters.

Since this can feel really abstract to talk about without an example, we looked at what it could mean to turn the two-fer exercise into a story, and it boils down to this:

• strip away all the details
• determine what the technical challenge is

For two-fer, if you strip everything away, the fundamental challenge is to format a simple string with user-provided input, and provide a default/fallback for when the user did not provide a value.

It doesn't matter what the string actually says, what the values are, or what the default value is. That said, we decided to stick with the basic "one for {x, you}, one for me" that two fer already has.

Here's the story that we came up with, as a starting point:

---

Tricky Triplets

One year ago, Lori gave birth to three beautiful daughters - Toa, Layla, and Adra - identical triplets. She hasn't slept much since!

Lori recently started introducing her daughters to solid food and is using the time-old tradition of eating a bit herself to encourage them: "One for Toa, one for me!", substituting the name of the baby in question, of course.

Recently, her parents came to visit, and they love helping out with the triplets. Unfortunately, they can't always tell them apart.

Your task is to provide a safety net for whichever adult happens to be feeding the triplets. When they can remember the name, they'll use it, but when they can't, they'll just say "you" instead.

In coding terms, you're going to write a short program which can be called in two ways, to either encourage a specific baby by name, or to encourage whichever baby is being fed at the time.

If you call encourage "Adra", the output should be "One for Adra, one for me.". Otherwise, the output should be "One for you, one for me.".

Can you make all the tests pass and ensure that Lori's children don't end up frustrated with their grandparents' ability to tell them apart?

---

What we want your help with is to finalize the story.

Is this story too much? Too little? Is it missing a key component? Is it problematic in any way?

Once we're certain the story itself is what we want it to be we'll also want to do copy-editing to ensure that it's as expressive as possible, flows well, and is grammatically correct and has no typos.

[iHiD]

(cc @exercism/track-maintainers before we march ahead 🙂)

[rpottsoh]

We want to hit the goldilocks zone of "not to little" and "not too much"

I don't know what this looks like.

[Cohen-Carlisle]

I think the story is fine (cute, even), but I'm not sure I like the title being so closely tied to the story instead of the exercise. When I first read the title I started imagining an exercise about having to choose between three options with some kind of algorithm.

[rpottsoh]

I am reading @Cohen-Carlisle's comment above and I agree. The title of the exercise ought to foreshadow what the problem is about that the student is being challenged to solve. For me, Two-Fer kinda does that. The fact that the description is a story about triplets is a random occurrence. The story could easily be about a kid divvying up marbles with his friends who has a poor sense of what is fair. One for you, two for me.

[iHiD]

Thanks for comments :)

So I disagree. I think these core exercises should be about the story, not the function, in all element (title, image, story, etc). For side exercises, where you need to choose which one to explore, quickly guessing the algorithm makes sense (e.g. isograph, pangram, grains, acronym). However, for core exercises, where someone does them in order, I think I want people to feel like there is a relevant story that they're solving, not just a wrapper for an algorithm they have to learn. Also, this exercise will generally be someone's first introduction to Exercism, and I don't think they'll have the pre-association at that point with "exercise == algorithm" that we instinctively have as regular users.

Two-fer is a great example. Before doing it, I had no preconceived association or idea about what the title meant, and now I've done it, I couldn't tell you the story behind the exercise. There was no reason for me to do it, other than it was a coding challenge, no emotional pull, no smile, etc. It's purely a functional challenge, quickly done and quickly forgotten. The reason that I like Bob or Food Chain as exercises is that I remember them fondly because I can tell you what they're about - why I solved them. I feel that that is lacking in many/most exercises right now.

[bencoman]

Really like the story line. For the title, I think use of "Triplets" creates misdirection. Nothing in
the exercise is related to the number of bubs. "Toddler" is a stronger word association to bubs than "Triplets". A title of "Toddler Twofer" better reflects the story, plus provides pleasant alliteration.

[Cohen-Carlisle]

Also, this exercise will generally be someone's first introduction to Exercism, and I don't think they'll have the pre-association at that point with "exercise == algorithm" that we instinctively have as regular users.

That's a good point. But I would echo @bencoman's suggestion, which is basically
why not both

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https://66.media.tumblr.com/0ae4a458b02b1705c96dd846493e2aad/tumblr_inline_n3ghj9J3u91qcklud.gif

I think having the name be associated with the story but also call to mind the code that was written will help it be even more memorable.

[rpottsoh]

I can see how a story can help one retain a memory of the exercise.

I conducted a little experiment just now. I asked my 15 year old daughter, who knows nothing about programming, to read two-fer and then tricky triplets. She found two-fer easier to comprehend because it was shorter and to the point. This was not a scientific experiment but I found the result interesting just the same.

I do agree, @iHiD, that there is value in a story if it helps one better retain a memory of the exercise. Tricky triplets does that, two-fer doesn't.

[macta]

Just a small reaction to this - the goal is a good one but if the descriptions get too elaborate and wordy it becomes too much of a chore to get going. You may find that you have two types of audience - the typical hacker learning a new language that wants to get going (hence succinct) and a newbie that wants a cuter description.

You can definitely support both, but I would try not to be too cute with the descriptions.

[bitfield]

animated gif

[kytrinyx]

Note: I've edited the conversation above to collapse animated gifs in HTTP details blocks, as I have a condition that makes it extraordinarily difficult to read a conversation with moving images in it.

We want to hit the goldilocks zone of "not to little" and "not too much"

I don't know what this looks like.

@rpottsoh that's why I opened this issue, so that we can explore that line.

The fact that the description is a story about triplets is a random occurrence. The story could easily be about a kid divvying up marbles with his friends who has a poor sense of what is fair. One for you, two for me.

Yes! Exactly. The story is not about the algorithmic part of the challenge. It doesn't matter what it is, only that it is memorable, and doesn't get in the way of understanding what you're supposed to do.

if the descriptions get too elaborate and wordy it becomes too much of a chore to get going

@macta Yes, I completely agree. This is where I think we need to find the balance. I'd actually love to see a couple of experiments:

1. The triplets story, except more succinct. Can we find a balance that keeps the emotional potential without making it onerous to get going?
2. The marbles story I like the poor sense of fairness thing. It also packs an emotional punch. Can we look at what two-fer would look like rewritten (equally succinctly) to be about the marbles (or candies, or cookies or whatever)

For the title, I think use of "Triplets" creates misdirection. Nothing in
the exercise is related to the number of bubs.

This is interesting. I don't think the title needs to be about the specific challenge. The title is (to my mind) only a mnemonic hook so that you remember which exercise is what, and a way to talk about it either in GitHub issues or on Slack or at meetups or whatever.

[bencoman]

For the title, I think use of "Triplets" creates misdirection. Nothing in
the exercise is related to the number of bubs.

This is interesting. I don't think the title needs to be about the specific challenge.

I agree. But whoops, I re-read the challenge and it does actually say "Toa, Layla, and Adra - identical triplets." Now what is interesting is why that didn't stick in my head so I made my comment above? Maybe because that information was irrelevant to challenge. But that could just be me - so here is an experiment you might do... Get a few people locally to read the story without the titles, then five minutes later give them the two titles in random order to choose between. Go with whichever has getss the most hits.

[NobbZ]

The problem I see with this story, it encourages hard coding the names. There are exactly 3 triplets and we know their names at implementation time.

In most languages I'd create a sum/enum type with 4 values. One for each of the triplets and the "unknown" case.

If though the tests would pop up with a random name, I'd say it invalidates the story/exercise assignment.

I really like the idea of the story, but we need to come up with one that still encourages a generic implementation.