ویکی‌توابع: ویکی‌توابع چه‌چیزی نیست

ویکی‌توابع یک نوع جدید وب‌سایت است و جامعه جدیدی را در هدف دارد. ما امید داریم که با بسیاری از ابزارها، سایت‌ها و جوامعی که وجود دارند همکاری کنیم: ما می‌خواهیم با محیط‌های توسعه یکپارچه، سیستم عامل های کامپیوتری ابری، سایت های توسعه برنامه‌ها و بسیاری دیگر همکاری کنیم.

اما ما همچنین هدفمان بر روی «چیز خاصی» بودن است: یک پروژه ویکی‌مدیا برای همه که در آن کتاب‌خانه‌ای از توابع کد را ایجاد و نگه‌داری کنند تا کمکی شود به پروژه ویکی‌مدیا و به همه که بتوانند یک تابع مشترک را در کدشان فراخوانند.

پس حال بیایید ببینیم ویکی‌توابع چه‌چیزی نیست.

ویکی‌توابع دانش‌نامه الگوریتم‌ها نیست

این به‌این معناست که ما هدفمان بر روی جمع‌آوری الگوریتم‌های معروف و نه‌چندان معرف مانند الگوریتم اقلیدس، روش نیوتن نیست. ما نمی‌خواهیم همه الگوریتم‌های جهان را با وفاداری و زمینه تاریخی‌اش در این ویکی بگذاریم.

بله، ما انتظار داریم که یک یا حتی چند تابع برای بزرگ‌ترین شمارنده مشترک داشته باشیم که هر یک از روش‌های متفاوتی استفاده می‌کنند، ولی هدف اصلی ویکی‌توابع جمع‌آوری الگوریتم‌ها نیست. البته بدون بعضی از آنها کامل نمی‌شود. اگر می‌خواهید الگوریتم جمع‌آوری کنید، بسیاری از ویکی‌پدیاها منبع خوبی هستند.

Unlike an encyclopedic overview of existing algorithms, Wikifunctions will also invite original work. We will not be restricted to functions that have been published elsewhere first, and we do not require for every function and implementation to be based on previously published work. Wikifunctions, much like Wikibooks and very unlike Wikipedia, will be open to novel contributions. The main criteria for implementations will be: under which conditions can we run a given implementation, and what resources is it expected to take?

Wikifunctions is not an app development site

We do not expect to make it possible to create full-fledged, stand-alone apps within Wikifunctions — there will be no place to store state, we don't aim to allow calling external APIs or directly cause changes to other sites, and we don't aim to package up apps with icons and UX, etc.

We absolutely expect Wikifunctions to be a very useful resource for app developers, and can very much imagine apps that are basically wrappers around one or more functions from Wikifunctions, but these would still need code and other assets which wouldn't be part of Wikifunctions. We are not competing in the area of no-code or low-code development sites.

Wikifunctions is not a code hosting service

Wikifunctions will host code — but not for whole projects, merely for individual functions. There won't be libraries, apps, or services developed on Wikifunctions with bug-trackers, forums, etc. There won't be a Web-based version control system such as Mercurial or Git running against Wikifunctions.

Again, we hope that there will be libraries, apps, and services that will rely on functions available in Wikifunctions, but they would be developed on a different site, such as Gerrit, GitHub, or GitLab.

Wikifunctions is not a programming language, nor is trying to evangelise a particular language

Wikifunctions will allow for functions to be implemented in a multitude of programming languages. The possibility to compose functions together to create higher level functions may look a little bit like a new programming language, but it will be extremely limited compared to most other programming languages, since we only allow for nested function calls and that's it.

Wikifunctions is not an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

We won't provide you with an interface for creating and developing software projects, interfacing with build, testing, and source control systems.

Wikifunctions is not a question-and-answer website

We are not competing with Stack Overflow and similar websites, where a developer would ask how to achieve a certain task and have community members discuss and answer the question. We won't contain code snippets to help answer the question, but we will organize code within our website to enable the evaluation of functions within a library of functions.

Wikifunctions is not a cloud computing platform

We do not provide computing resources and access to services and APIs so that you can run your computational needs on our platform, either for money or for free. Use of Wikifunctions's evaluation platform is to improve access to knowledge for everyone.

Wikifunctions is not a code snippet website

We are not competing with code snippet sites such as GitHub Gists, rosettacode.org, esolangs.org, or helloworldcollection.de.

Wikifunctions differs in that it allows running code and composing existing functions together to create new ones. As well, Wikifunctions is for useful and meaningful code, not temporary, arbitrary snippets that other platforms may accept.

Wikifunctions is not a code education platform

We are not focused on teaching people how to code, the material in Wikifunctions will not be laid out in a pedagogical order, and we also won't make sure to comprehensively cover all topics important for coding. In fact, we aim for Wikifunctions to be usable for people who don't know how to code and who don't need to learn how to code to use most of Wikifunctions effectively. Though the Wikifunctions community may well help each other in sharing best practices, style guides, and tips on how to use the site in different languages, these will be aimed at the purpose of serving the world's knowledge.