Codewars Challenge: Opposite Number

Joel Okoro — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 18:45:58 +0000

This is my approach to the 8kyu challenge labelled Opposite Number. This will be an explanation on how I approached the challenge and came to a solution.

The instructions for this challenge were given a number, find it's opposite. For example, 4 would return -4 , 88 would return -88 and 200.38 would return -200.38. The challenge provides the user a function called opposite which takes in a number parameter, as shown below.

function opposite(number){
/// your code here
}

Initial Approach

I first started by thinking of how I could turn the number that would be passed as an argument into a negative number or an opposite of itself. My initial attempt was to append the string "-" (minus sign) to number and then return it.

function opposite(number){
let newNum = "-" + number;
let oppNum = parseInt(newNum)
return oppNum;
}

The code snippet above had a few problems. One issue was that because of the use of the parseInt() method, decimals or floats would be rounded to the nearest integer e.g. 4.21 would be -4, instead of -4.21.

Final approach & solution

I then realised that I had to think of a way to get the opposite of number without appending any strings or special characters. I knew that in order to get the negative of the number, it would involve subtracting from number from another integer or vice versa. The only integer that would remain constant without changing itself or the argument, as well as guaranteeing that a negative number would be returned regardless of being an integer or float, was 0.

function opposite(number){
let oppNum = 0 - number
return oppNum;
}

Resuming an old project

Joel Okoro — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 21:49:58 +0000

So it turns out that getting back to a project you haven't touched in weeks, gives you a feeling that is eerily similar to the one you get when you load up the save file for a game you haven't played in months or a TV Series you haven't been keeping up with, only to be reminded how much you've forgotten the controls and that so-and-so character is now the villain.

The project in question was a website with statistics on top performing players in the Top 2 tiers of English Football (Premier League and Championship). The technologies used were HTML, CSS, SASS, JavaScript and Photoshop.

At the time of creating the project, I wanted to practice using NPM and SASS for a project and combining it with my love of football, and felt this would be a perfect way to do that. Anyway, as with most projects, I left it on the backburner to start a completely new project. Basically, every day I wasn't completing this project, I felt a sort of guilt and regret as well as feeling that the skills I gained learning NPM and SASS were slowing fading away.

So, how did I overcome this? Well, I carried on with the project as if I never left. I know, it's such an underwhelming answer. But the reason is, every time I thought to myself that I spent too much time away from the project to remember how to write mixins in SASS or that whether or not I should carry on with a brand new project, I wasted even more time. This led me to spend days re-learning things like built-in SASS functions and NPM Scripts just to make sure I remembered each concept for when I resumed the project.

I feel like it's actually a lot more beneficial to dive back into the project as the concepts actually came back to me whilst I was coding, in addition to re-reading the code I wrote when I last did the project. I also found it super helpful to reference the official documentation.

DEV Community: Joel Okoro

Codewars Challenge: Opposite Number

Initial Approach

Final approach & solution

Resuming an old project