A miserable autumn day. Rain and gray skies. Two vacation days that aren't enough for the beach, but enough to visit your old uncle in the middle of nowhere. Wrong turns. A dead GPS. Then — a pop, a hiss. Your tire quits.
This is how Day 1 of the Fright Night coding challenge begins — a 10-day journey created for Hyperskill learners that runs from October 22nd through October 31st. It's part puzzle, part story, and entirely about rediscovering why programming is fun.
Here's what inspired it.
Why I Built This
I really love all kinds of puzzles and riddles. I think programming is the perfect sandbox for creating your own puzzles, because the possibilities are endless, and you can solve problems even knowing the language at a surface level — the main thing is being able to recognize algorithms and patterns.
For me, coding isn't just about business logic and production deployments. It's a hobby. It's a playground. And I wanted to create something that reminded other developers of that too.
The Rocky Horror Connection
When I was designing this challenge, I kept thinking about my favorite film — the horror musical Rocky Horror Picture Show. I think those who go through the challenge will definitely notice the parallels. I won't spoil what they are, but keep your eyes open for Easter eggs.
Who Is This For?
This challenge is for everyone who understands that programming is not only writing code for business tasks, but also a very fun hobby.
I tried to make the tasks as accessible as possible for all levels of developers. For some, it will just take a little more time to figure it out. The minimum requirement is simple: know any programming language well enough to understand a for-loop. That's it.
What I Hope You'll Get From It
I hope that all programmers who participate in the challenge will have a good time. The tasks will help them remember algorithms and language elements they haven't used in a long time.
And if you complete all 10 challenges, you'll earn a unique profile cover, a bag of gems, and exclusive rewards from our partners.
The Technical Side
Everything from start to finish was conceived, developed, and tested in Python. But our challenge is specifically designed so that it can be comfortably solved in any programming language.
You can use Python, JavaScript, Java — whatever you're comfortable with.
What I Learned Building This
I once again became convinced of how difficult it can be to describe even the simplest task in a way that is understandable to the maximum number of people. I learned to better abstract from my code and look at the task I just wrote from the outside. This is very valuable, especially for those who often interact with other developers and assign them tasks.
A Peek Behind the Curtain
I don't want to spoil it, but closer to the end there will be one good task for finding the shortest path, for which I had to write a procedurally generated map. It was fun.
What Day 1 Looks Like
The code to the gates is four digits. It is the first, the second, the third and the fourth most common digit in today's sequence, in that particular order. If there are equal number of appearances, higher digit should come first.
How to Join
If this sounds interesting, here's what you need to do:
- Sign up to Hyperskill
- Find Fright Night Challenge in My Learning and start with Day 1
- Join our Discord community and check out the #fright-night-coding channel for hints if you feel stuck
- Use any programming language you want — write and run code in IDE of your choice or use our code playground
- Have fun!
Happy coding, and happy Halloween. 🎃
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