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by trynewideas 1208 days ago
They used GitHub pages as a dumb host for HTML files, JavaScript, images, CSS. Repo link in the story, here for convenience: https://github.com/thstsa/spacetourism

Even has a .nojekyll file in the repo, and they since moved publishing to Netlify.
4 comments
Jensson 1208 days ago
But you can use pure html in many other generators, if they ban based on capability and not usage then the ruling is as intended.

I agree they should have just been asked to move it to another site in that case so the judge can be sure there isn't anything going on behind the scenes, I wonder why they didn't just ask that the instant they saw it was github pages instead of just disqualifying it without notice?

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justinclift 1208 days ago
> I wonder why they didn't just ask that the instant they saw it was github pages instead of ...

It sound like the person who did the judging isn't technical at all, so saw "github" and that was the end of it. They don't know any better themselves.

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hbn 1208 days ago
The git history is publicly available in the repo and you can see all the changes are directly to the source. They obviously were not using a generator.
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leereeves 1208 days ago
Netlify also supports templates:

https://www.netlify.com/integrations/templates/

as well as Markdown blogs with Next.js:

https://www.netlify.com/blog/2020/05/04/building-a-markdown-...

It would be difficult to find a web host that doesn't support a variety of templates and HTML generators. What should matter is whether the students used them, not whether they are available on the same host.

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Zetobal 1208 days ago
They are technically right and are teachers... we all know what that means.
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msla 1208 days ago
Being "technically right" is more rightness than some teachers require: We all know about teachers who are right because they are teachers, ditto bosses and family members and so on. Learning this now is good experience, and learning it in a context where they might even be able to leverage it into a job interview is even better.
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HWR_14 1208 days ago
Sure. And I think you can host your own HTML/CSS/JS on Wix too.

It's reasonable to blacklist a whole range of solutions that contain the ability to be used as template engines and then insist the students use something else.

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alickz 1208 days ago
I don't think it's reasonable to blacklist the most popular VCS website used among developers. It's a competition for devs, they _should_ be using version control.

All it would take is a cursory glance by another dev to know if they used templating or not, which I would consider baseline for a developer contest.

The article says their teacher just seen it was on GitHub and disqualified them off the bat. Unreasonable imo

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HWR_14 1207 days ago
They hosted it on GitHub. Not stored the source there. Hosted it.

Besides, I would say that teaching people how to use version control is good. But there are lots of non-GitHub solutions. Prefer those for students! Teach them the fundamentals.

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