I've been trying to contribute thoughtful Kata and get a lot of requests for "add random tests".

When I ask why, the answer I get (if I get one at all) is a pointer to a solution that is some variation on looking up the test expectations in an ordered list (eg: the first call should return 16, then the next one should return 22, and so on). This might be one definition of "cheating". It doesn't represent the user having solved the problem.

Personally, I see this as a place for self improvement. If people want to cheat themselves by not actually solving the problems, why should I do extra work to prevent that?

The fact that folks are raising issues on kata I contribute in good faith rubs me the wrong way. There are situations where random tests cases are good and useful, and I like them there. But personally I'm not that motivated to do extra work when building a kata just to prevent people from cheating.

Is the site is moving in a direction that tries to treat scores as some kind of objective level of talent where you might, for example, see recruiters skimming top-ranked folks? That's a valid direction to take it, but probably not one I'm very interested in.

Is there a stated policy on this somewhere?

Closing issue without comment/link/justification

Added a nice example test, good idea.

Everybody asks for random tests, but the only justification I see for that is to prevent "cheating". That's not very interesting to me, but feel free to contribute some tests of your own.

I'd like to build a JS version of this kata. Is there a way to do that and keep these two katas together as a translation bundle?

Well, you folks are pretty clever with your workarounds, but this one has me stumped. Not sure how to block you from using Symbol.replace :)

I guess I should read the policies here? Hah.

I don't have much motivation to stop people from cheating, if that's what they'd like to do.

For me this place is about self-improvement, not certification, so if folks want to cheat themselves by not solving the problems, that's their choice.

Why?

added random tests, kinda fun.

I think I have resolved the issue.

added some more tests

I'm not sure how interested I am in preventing people from "cheating" if they want to do so, but I suppose it's worth trying as an exercise since I've never done random tests here before.

Nice solution!

Yeah, I don't think I want to add secondChild. The DOM api doesn't have that (if it did, would you have third and fourth child? That probably wouldn't make sense).

I thought about adding nextSibling and other dom-like properties but it was too much work to put in the data structure.

I wrote a pretty good amount of tests. Not intending to be combative, but what's the benefit of random tests?

I added a suite of tests that exactly matches the written example, and made the written example a little more robust.