Become a better programmer with programming challenges f
When I went to university me and some friends spent time on practising algorithm implementations for the national programming contests that were held each year. The concept was (and still is) to solve about ten problems in a couple of hours time using a programming language of choice. The source code is submitted to an automatic judge that compiles the code and feeds the executable with test data and verifies that the program delivers the correct output expected for the input.
After being out in real work I have noticed that I have had good use of these earlier exercises. One of the most important lessons is to know by heart the complexity of different algorithms and when to use a simple brute force method and when a more advanced algorithm must be implemented.
I noticed that the old Online Judge system that we practised on in the early 2000s still is online and has grown to a large site with lots of users solving programming challenges. If you want to recapitulate your algorithm skills this is a fun and very hands on way to do small exercises and get feedback in realtime. Also there is an addictive gamification effect of trying to solve more problems.
Browse the catalogue of problems and find some challenge that feels interesting. The problems are color coded so you know which one you already solved and some stats that gives a hint on how difficult the problems have been for other users to solve.
Once you have submitted your code you get instant feedback on how your code has performed on the judges test cases.
At the moment you may submit solutions in C/C++/C++11 and Java. Create an account at http://uva.onlinejudge.org/. Once you’ve done that you can follow your progress and your statistics in different ways. Here’s my stats http://uhunt.felix-halim.net/id/426271.
Browse the catalogue of problems and find some challenge that feels interesting. The problems are color coded so you know which one you already solved and some stats that gives a hint on how difficult the problems have been for other users to solve.
Once you have submitted your code you get instant feedback on how your code has performed on the judges test cases.
At the moment you may submit solutions in C/C++/C++11 and Java. Create an account at http://uva.onlinejudge.org/. Once you’ve done that you can follow your progress and your statistics in different ways. Here’s my stats http://uhunt.felix-halim.net/id/426271.
I’ve recently done a couple of problems per night just for the fun of it. It feels exciting to program on a hard problem using just 20 lines of code instead of coding 1000 lines of boiler plate which I guess many of us do at our every day works.
Without trying to indicate that I’m an expert on complex algorithms, here are some things I think are valuable when getting serious about algorithm design and solving harder programming challenges.
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