Just learned that Wikimedia has a project called Wikifunctions. I’m a big fan of Wikipedia and associated projects, and on its face sounds like a cool site. I do wonder how this would work in practical terms though, like how could it actually be used?
Seems kinda trash tbh. Like the concept I love, I would love a cross-language “by examples” learning resource and snippet repository beyond SO. But looking through there most of the function options are trivial problems. The ones that aren’t one or two lines mostly have broken code that passes very few tests. The weird Z naming of function and variable makes it totally unreadable. The “composition” option is barely comprehendable and beyond that I only see two language options so it can’t even serve as a “rosetta stone”.
Yeah, I guess you could argue it needs more contributors, but sort of like Wikipedia, suppose it saw wide adoption. Is it just a learn to code type thing? I guess better that Wikimedia runs it than stack exchange or whoever.
I’m not exactly sure what to think about it, but I do like how there’s specific things that have their implementation in code right there. I did only look at the site for like a minute, so take that with a grain of salt.
It didn’t make any sense to me when it was originally announced, it still doesn’t. I don’t understand the project’s goals or how it’s supposed to reach those goals. The mission statement is incomprehensible to me.
Seemed verbose, overengineered, unnecessary framework introducing complexity. I didn’t see a strong use case for it, maybe for a lack of an obvious one or my understanding of it.
It also didn’t leave a strong impression. I had to look at the site and goal/description to remember.
Maybe some niche data handlers and implementors have use for it. But a Wikimedia project seems overblown for that.
I have not used it though. I’m open to being shown and corrected.
