Issues with challenge #EG2

[samer-hamood]

Before the specific issues I have, I’d like to highlight the main problem with this stage (as well as others), which is that there are no instructions. I know; it’s in beta and free (or at least it was), but what I have to do, like everyone else, is troll through the forum messages to figure out what exactly to do, which seems less efficient than just updating the stage’s web page.

I’ve found this binspec in one of the posts. For the header count field, it says it’s an unsigned varint. I’ve only found one place (here) where the type for that field is mentioned, but it just says varint, not which type (signed or unsigned). Asking Gemini and ChatGPT, both say it’s a signed varint and changing the field made the test pass when it was failing before, so I’d like to know if this was a mistake and where and how I could find out what the field type actually is.

I also see this in a post regarding the CRC. I did not implement CRC either, as I am parsing the CRC field from the log files, yet my tests are still passing. Is this correct, or am I missing something?

One last thing, the task is categorised as hard. Could you explain why this is so?

Thanks a lot.

[andy1li]

Hey @samer-hamood, sorry for the delayed response!

Yes, the Kafka base stages are out of beta, but the extensions are still in beta. We’re gradually adding instructions to those extensions, including the Consuming Messages extension.

Also, sorry about the incorrect information in the binspec. I’ve corrected it in this PR.

The earlier reply about CRC was also incorrect, and I’ve updated it with the correct approach.

Regarding the difficulty rating, we initially assign it based on estimates and later adjust it based on completion rates from users. Let us know how you would rate it.

[samer-hamood]

Okay, if it’s a relative difficulty rating, it may be fine as it is, but I would make that clear.

As for what rating I would give it, out of easy, medium or hard, probably a medium.