Note that this bounty is written for student programmers in Singapore. We could have made this available more generally, but we wanted to give this opportunity to students first — especially given the current hiring/internship climate in Singapore.

Xmrit (pronounced zam-er-it) is a spinoff of Commoncog that makes XmR charts easy to use in the browser. We’re building this because we believe XmR charts are fundamental to making business leaders truly data-driven, and they should be as simple to create as a regular line chart.

Why consider working on a small charting tool? We think there are three things that make this project interesting:

1. You’ll learn to build products, not just code: A CS program teaches solid technical skills, but building products that people want to use requires different abilities entirely. At Xmrit, you’ll work with real users (including instructors from Reforge’s Product School and several tech companies), add instrumentation to your features, and learn to read user behaviour data. This isn’t theoretical — you’ll see exactly how your work impacts actual businesses.
2. Your work will be open source: We’ve made Xmrit open source because we want XmR charts to gain mass adoption. We actually encourage companies to use our code in their products. Your contributions will be public, showing concrete evidence of building technology that businesses use. (The first version of Xmrit was built by an NUS CS student in his first year!) 
3. You’ll work on something that matters: Xmrit launched nine months ago, and it’s already getting traction from data technologists. Examples: one [co-founder of Mode], two [CEO of Arch], three, four. This is somewhat helped by Commoncog’s influence amongst executives — the viral essay that launched Xmrit may be found here.

The Project (Two Phases):

Phase 1: Library Rewrite Bounty

• What: Port the open source Xmrit tool (Github) from Highcharts to Apache ECharts
• Why: Highcharts’s licence is too restrictive for adoption by large companies; we’ve received complaints over the past few months.
• Timeline: Roughly one weekend of work, submission by 23:59 30 November 2024. The timeline is tight because we want to select for programmers who can treat this as a spike. You should aim for around two-three days of work, max. If you need more time, we can discuss it!
• Deliverable: A pull request to the Xmrit repository.
• Acceptance Criteria: The goal is a total replacement for the Highcharts library, but to preserve all functionality. To be precise:
  • Basic chart rendering
  • Red/yellow/blue points when exceptional variation is detected.
  • Draggable dividers
  • Lock limits (when limits are locked, there should be a solid line).
  • Download image functionality.
  • The above features are mandatory — though if you can’t replicate it due to limitations in ECharts, write an explanation in your PR. To break ties, we will also consider the overall look and feel when you use the tool (x-axis/y-axis tick + labels, the three values shown on the right of the locked limits, non-overlapping data labels, download image button working.)
  • View the current live tool here.
• Ranking Criteria:
  1. How close it is to fully replicating Highcharts functionality.
  2. If the first criteria is tied, we will award it to the first person who submits a pull request.
  3. Our principle: make it work > make it nice > make the code tidy.
• Bounty: SGD 500 goes to the person who submits the first acceptable PR before 30 November 2024. We decide in the first week of December. See this view for competing forks. (The timeline is tight because we want to select for programmers who can treat this as a spike. If you need more time, we can discuss it.) Note that if your PR doesn’t win, we’ll still credit you in the repo’s README.

Phase 2: Adding Two Features in December

• What: Add seasonality and trend analysis to Xmrit
• Why: Users need to remove trend/seasonality to spot real variation. This will function more like an internship, as you’ll be working with real world stakeholders. As a note: no user interface paradigm exists for these two features, and much of the challenge will be in coming up with a suitably easy to use UI. We will be doing a fair bit of usability testing.
• Timeline: One month, flexible-time
• Deliverable: Implement spreadsheet seasonality method + trending process limits
• Payment: SGD 1,200
• How to Apply: Submit a PR anytime before 30 November 2024 for Phase 1.

Our commitment for Phase 2: We’ll give you clear requirements, fixed scope, and realistic timelines, with the caveat that feature development is necessarily iterative. We prefer candidates who are willing to commit to both Phase 1 and Phase 2, as this leverages knowledge built earlier.

Next Steps

If you’re interested, submit a pull request for Phase 1.

Who We Are

I’m Cedric; I helped create the NUS Hackers a decade ago. You’ll be working with two members of my team for Xmrit. Postcognito is my holding company. You may read a longer bio here, or watch a Friday Hacks talk on Xmrit’s ideas here.

Previous collaborators tell us this work changed how they think about building products. If you’re interested in building useful tools while learning product development principles that go beyond code, let’s talk.