Hey guys, I think that this challenge doesn’t really fit here. The specification is incomplete and very confusing. Even as a professional JS dev, I struggled to make the tests pass even though I laid out everything else correctly - except one gotcha: I had no idea what “orbit’s semi-major axis” is, even after glancing at wikipedia and some diagrams. So I had to peek and after seeing a Solution, it was a 5sec fix (just adding the two numbers together).
If you insist on keeping this this challenge, please provide instructions how to calculate all necessary variables, so that no additional research is necessary - especially in a topic one does not understand.
I have read arguments made by mods in other threads that developers often receive incomplete specs and have to implement a solution anyway, but that is not really true, nor is it correct.
First of all, if I don’t understand astrodynamics I won’t start a job at NASA, so I should really not receive tasks like that anyway.
And second, if you receive incomplete solution, you should cycle back to the product owner and ask for clear specs, because introducing an unknown element can yield to dangerous results in the long term, especially when you don’t receive tests to pass in advance. Blindly counting on the dev finding correct resources is plainly wrong and should not be encouraged at all. This is not how serious companies/projects work anyway.
If you receive unclear specs, it only shows one major issue: you did not understand the requirement to clear any confusion in advance during grooming/refinement.
Anyway, this curriculum is to teach basic and advanced JS, not to show how real world programmers struggle at their jobs, nor it should discourage any new students from continuing further and I see that this challenge in particular is really causing pain to many people. It’s just poor and honestly, it doesn’t even teach anything new. Just a map and an ugly ass formula. This doesn’t even make any sense.
Either provide all necessary information or remove it.
Link to the challenge: