Skill Forge: A Comprehensive Learning Platform for Aspiring Developers

Skill Forge is a web-based platform designed to help developers hone their skills through a diverse collection of programming challenges and exercises. The platform offers a learning environment where users can tackle problems, track their progress, and compare their performance with other developers in real-time. Built with a strong emphasis on flexibility, the platform caters to developers at various stages of their journey—from beginners to advanced coders.

Key Features

• Learning Paths: Skill Forge organizes exercises into structured learning paths. Each path represents a key area of programming, such as algorithms, data structures, or web development, and offers an incremental learning curve. Users can dive into topics of their choice while progressing from beginner-friendly tasks to more advanced challenges.

• Wide Range of Exercises: The platform features over 10+ coding exercises, spanning various programming paradigms, difficulty levels, and topics. Exercises are stored in a MySQL database, and each problem is associated with specific test cases that are executed to validate user-submitted solutions.

Technical Stack

Front-End:

• SvelteKit: The user interface of Skill Forge is built using SvelteKit, a modern JavaScript framework that allows for smooth, fast client-side interactivity. The use of Svelte’s reactive programming model simplifies state management and provides a clean, modular approach to front-end development.

• TailwindCSS: TailwindCSS is integrated to handle the styling of the entire platform. With utility-first CSS, we’ve created a highly customizable and responsive interface, allowing for a consistent look across devices.

Back-End:

• SvelteKit API Endpoints: The back-end logic is powered by SvelteKit’s server-side rendering capabilities. All interaction between the front-end and the MySQL database is facilitated through API routes or form actions. Each API call, such as fetching exercise details, user progress, or submitting solutions, is handled with optimized queries.

• MySQL Database: The core data, including exercises, users, submissions, and learning paths, are stored in a MySQL relational database. Tables are interlinked through foreign keys and indexes to ensure efficient querying.

Isolated Code Execution:

One of the more advanced aspects of Skill Forge is the isolated code execution environment. For security and scalability, Skill Forge utilizes the isolated-vm library to execute user-submitted code in a sandboxed environment. This ensures that user code cannot access or interfere with server resources. Test cases associated with each exercise are executed inside this virtual machine, and results (whether the tests passed or failed) are returned to the user.

User Progress and Ranking

Skill Forge also provides comprehensive tools for users to track their coding journey. Users can view their submission history, monitor which exercises they have completed, and track how they stack up against others via the ranking system. A key feature of the platform is the ability to fetch a user’s rank based on the number of distinct exercises they’ve successfully completed. Real-Time Feedback and Detailed Analytics

Users receive instant feedback after submitting solutions. This feedback includes a breakdown of each test case (whether it passed or failed) and detailed performance analytics. In the future, we plan to integrate code profiling tools, allowing users to get even more insights into their submission's performance.

Conclusion

Skill Forge is more than just a coding platform. It’s a learning tool that adapts to each user’s individual skill level, offering personalized progress tracking, real-time feedback, and a robust exercise system. With a scalable architecture and multi-language support on the roadmap, it aims to be a comprehensive resource for coders looking to grow their skills at any level.

TODO

• Change avatar storing file names to be the user id instead of a UUID
• Add Profile pictures
• Add other supported languages (JavaScript and Python)
• Use exercise slug instead if it's id (used both instead to make a self regenerating slug)
• Add console output
• Add learning paths instead of categories
• Make a homepage
• Add search for problems
• Add word wrap toggle to editor
• Add rate limiting to test running and submitting solutions
• Make toasts prettier
• (Kind of WIP) Add an admin dashboard
• Add an admin page to edit already existing exercises
• Add a settings page
• Load latest submission as default code if one exists
• Add sorting to problems list
• Add RAM usage to tests
• Add timer functionality
• Add an activity tracker like github
• Add lucide icon library instead of raw svg's
• Add custom font size
• Fix multiple tests running when going multiple times to an exercise page
• Add toasts instead of ugly alerts
• Make the website somewhat responsive
• Add a user dashboard
• Fix random exercise page not reloading current exercise if already on the exercise page
• Make a logo
• Fix editor python and java support