Bughunt and Revitalization of JavaScript Behavioural Libraries

[gdevenyi]

Title

Bughunt and Revitalization of JavaScript Behavioural Libraries

Leaders

@gdevenyi Gabriel A. Devenyi
@joshunrau Joshua Unrau

Collaborators

@david-roper
@Flyinchicken
@yanHaniff

Brainhack Global 2023 Event

Brainhack Montreal

Project Description

Behavioural instruments on the web are essential for data collection, both in the laboratory and at home with participants. There are several web-based libraries that allow researchers to design and deploy such instruments with varying levels of features, reliability, documentation, and bugs.

This project is an educational experiment and bughunt. We will gather, evaluate, test, and attempt to improve existing web-based behavioural tools, including (but not limited to) LabJS, jsPsych and psychoJS. This project is motivated by the goals of ensuring existing libraries continue to be usable for future researchers, so their experiments will continue to work and provide reliable experimental data, as well as ensuring these tools are documented enough for new users to use them.

Participants in this project have the chance to learn web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, how to participate in a collaborative Github project, how to write good issues, and how to write good PRs. Depending on the project, participants may also learn about continuous integration software. Participants will also learn about how to construct behavioural instruments in the libraries we work on.

Link to project repository/sources

https://github.com/felixhenninger/lab.js
https://github.com/jspsych/jsPsych
https://github.com/psychopy/psychojs

Goals for Brainhack Global

This project will ensure that existing web-based behavioural libraries are installable through standard package managers (e.g., npm, pip) and usable in modern projects. This includes ensuring that package dependencies are reasonably well updated. Our goal is to ensure that a basic tutorial exists for each tool which can be successfully run by a new user.

We will also attempt to resolve outstanding issues listed in the repositories with PRs.

Good first issues

1. Implement tutorial/demo experiment from all tools to confirm ability to install and use.

Communication channels

Brainhack mattermost.

Skills

• JavaScript: Basic to Advanced
• TypeScript: Basic to Advanced
• Git :Basic
• CSS: Basic
• HTML: Basic

Onboarding documentation

No response

What will participants learn?

Participants in this project have the chance to learn web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, how to participate in a collaborative Github project, how to write good issues, and how to write good PRs. Depending on the project, participants may also learn about continuous integration software. Participants will also learn about how to construct behavioural instruments in the libraries we work on.

Data to use

N/A

Number of collaborators

1

Credit to collaborators

Credit depends on the external projects we intend to contribute to.

Image

Leave this text if you don't have an image yet.

Type

documentation, method_development

Development status

0_concept_no_content

Topic

other

Tools

other

Programming language

containerization, documentation, html_css, javascript

Modalities

behavioral

Git skills

0_no_git_skills, 1_commit_push, 2_branches_PRs

Anything else?

No response

Things to do after the project is submitted and ready to review.

• Add a comment below the main post of your issue saying: Hi @brainhackorg/project-monitors my project is ready!
• Twitter-sized summary of your project pitch.

[gdevenyi]

@brainhackorg/project-monitors my project is ready