I recently launched sttrace.com. It helps users practice real world Software Development, DevOps and SRE scenarios.
It has multiple problems which heavily revolve around skills required for everyday developer tasks. Up until today I was creating new problem everyday. The process was simple I need to create bunch of files data.json for metadata, description.md for problem statement, init.sh for setting initial task state in container and task_submit.sh to evalute users submittion, and the problem was pretty much ready.
I had a simple CLI tool which will then create the Docker image and parse the data.json and description.md file for additional data and upload everything to backend server.
So why did I open-source it?
The problems on sttrace.com needs to be as close as possible to real world scenarios faced by developers. Having spent only 3 years in the industry as DevOps and SRE engineer, I realised that my experience is very limited. This means that eventually I will run out of good scenarios for these problems.
This will heavily affect the quality of site and turn it into yet another coding platform with 10+ problems which revolves around same data structure or algorithm.
Making it open source allows other experienced engineers around the world to contribute new and fresh challenges. This also creates a community around the project which attracts like-minded people who have same goal.
My motive behind sttrace.com was never to create yet another programming platform where users would mindlessly grind for hours and get nothing out of it. It was to create an upskilling platform where users can learn stuff by solving challenges which would help them in their career.
This doesn't mean that I've open sourced entire source code. I would still manage the website and hosting myself. This allows me to focus more on the core product and marketing side of things.
The problemset GitHub repository sttrace-com/problemset is now actively accepting contributions. Anyone with professional experience in Software Development, DevOps, SRE and Security is welcome to contribute.
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