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Robin Kretzschmar
Robin Kretzschmar

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Do you do coding challenges like adventOfCode?

There are various coding challenges, the most popular one around here is for sure #adventofcode.

Do you do other coding challenges / solve training problems besides that?

For example a newsletter like DailyCodingProblem.

Top comments (9)

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leob profile image
leob

Personally no, I'm way to busy with (paid) customer projects ... if I would want to do something outside of that I would probably choose to work on open source projects, not on challenges or katas or whatever.

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darksmile92 profile image
Robin Kretzschmar

That's noble to choose open source contributions over challenges.
I personally just use the dailycodingproblem newsletter and try to implement some of them in a language I don't use daily or am learning at the moment (like Go and Rust) to get some practice and don'tt have to spend energy on thinking of stuff to do with those languages.

This helps to be prepared to contribute to open source projects which use a language that is new to me :)

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leob profile image
leob

Yes you're right about that, it can help you build confidence & skills especially for languages that you're using less.

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faraazahmad profile image
Syed Faraaz Ahmad • Edited

One thing I dont like about coding challenges is that they're mostly based on data structures and algorithms and while that is all fair and good, it starts to get boring after some time. I want coding challenges that represent working on production code in real life

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aleksandrhovhannisyan profile image
Aleksandr Hovhannisyan • Edited

No. I've always tried forcing myself to enjoy Leetcode-type puzzles and coding challenges and have always walked away 1) feeling miserable, and 2) doubting my abilities as a developer. I know that I'm good at dev. I'm just not (always) good at these types of problems, and that's obviously okay (to the rational part of my brain—my ego thinks otherwise).

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darksmile92 profile image
Robin Kretzschmar

I can totally relate to that. I don't do them often, but when I do, there is always one rated as "easy" and I'm ending up questioning my existence :D

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rodiongork profile image
Rodion Gorkovenko

As author of web-site with small coding challenges (CodeAbbey) I'd say that some people like them, but generally many developers don't. There are reasons:

  • challenges or problems often are too easy or too hard for any given dev
  • they are usually small, not something like good test-project as may help learning some technical skills (some framework, db etc)

Still they are worth for many - giving good practice of doing casual programming things for newbies - or providing puzzles for experienced coders to extend their knowledge (as IT nowadays is too vast for anyone to know everything).

So don't expect much. Just keep trying :)

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Stephanie Handsteiner

If you like maths, you can also always go to Project Euler and solve some problems. Might also use a language you're not yet that confident with.

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darksmile92 profile image
Robin Kretzschmar

That's great I didn't know about this. Thanks for sharing :)