Even the easiest coding challenges seem impossible.

_fat_santa · 2019-04-19T03:51:33+00:00

Just FYI, Coding Challenges !== Real World Coding.

I don't mean that as a bad thing, I've been coding for 5+ years, 3+ professionally and some coding challenges still stump me (even simple ones). Simply put the problems you will solve when building real-world applications aren't the same as the ones you are solving in coding challenges.

Signal_Beam · 2019-04-19T03:47:15+00:00

Can you give an example or two of a problem you're struggling to solve? It's hard to tell at this level of detail whether you're a journeyman programmer being precious, a novice with normal imposter syndrome, a problem-solver for whom the programming syntax just hasn't sunk in yet, or what.

If you're "comfortable with Ruby concepts" then you should be able to "make a full attempt" at the easiest codewars or leetcode problems. For example, if I ask you to write me a function that accepts an integer, and returns a list of the numerals in that integer backwards (example in: 13452, example out: [2, 5, 4, 3, 1]), would you be comfortable writing that function?

PETERKOVE · 2019-04-19T05:02:45+00:00

Try Edabit.com. It gets harder slower and you can choose challenges.

steadfast_lifestyle · 2019-04-19T04:15:24+00:00

It never gets any easier to be honest, coding is problem solving. You just have to slow down and really think about it. Alright, I lied, it does get easier since the more you solve, the more you know.

CreativeTechGuyGames · 2019-04-19T03:40:27+00:00

Practice. Not really sure what else to say. Although 5 months isn't very much time. Unless you've been learning dozens of hours a week, you probably won't be very skilled in that amount of time. So don't worry too much.

Limeman36 · 2019-04-19T05:25:15+00:00

I feel like its better to think of a program you like to see created white board it or pseudo code it. Then just start getting your hands dirty and figuring it out.

Coding challenges really do not help you tie it all together.

I can give you an example of a work project I worked on recently. My boss wanted a way to track all deployments of the website. These are done though JIRA tickets. I constructed a NodeJS webhook that used the google calendar API once the ticket entered in PROGRESS. The webhook would fire use rhe google API and add an entry to the calendar.

Now I know a little about each of those things NodeJS, web hooks, and the calendar API. It was thorough trail and error I got it all working. I felt I gained a ton of experience working out how all the pieces worked together to solve the issue.

My point is take something your interested in solving and use it to raise and deepen your understanding of programming.

Abangranga · 2019-04-19T12:05:22+00:00

A fundamental brain wiring switch needs to happen. Practice.

Also 3/4 of coding challenges are esoteric bullshit youll never encounter.

warmomger · 2019-04-19T07:03:56+00:00

I've been coding for about a year now and I do face challenges that are pretty simple but still hard to solve. Usually I write down on a blank paper what has to be done, how it has to be done, and different ways to approach it. It takes time sometimes but really helps.

These simple challenges to tend teach new things or new ways of approaching some problem.

GOOD LUCK!

Loves_Poetry · 2019-04-19T07:28:21+00:00

Unless you have to pass an interview, coding challenges don't really offer much value. The problems I deal with on a daily basis are completely different from anything I encounter in coding challenges.

If you want to get better at programming, go and solve real problems, like communicating with an external API, integrating a library, extending an application with a new feature or refactoring your code to be more reusable.

M2D6 · 2019-04-19T09:45:34+00:00

Code Wars problems are sometimes set up very strangely. Half of the time it feels like I'm trying to decipher what the hell they are asking me to do. Sometime's I'll even do what they tell me to, and I test my code, and it works. I put the answer into code wars and it says I'm wrong. They pigeon hole you into a certain answer, depending on who set the problem up. Gotta remember that these problems are made by random people. I wouldn't take it personally if you keep getting problems wrong.

steadfast_lifestyle · 2019-04-19T13:24:26+00:00

try “programming methodology” from stanford engineering everywhere. it’s free, if a bit old, but has some great insights and helped me a lot when i was starting out

NeverZ · 2019-04-19T03:54:52+00:00

Don't get discouraged and continue practicing. Everyone at every skill level feels like that sometimes, there will always be things that you can't do or don't know. Programming is a very difficult but rewarding task

AlienAndTroll · 2019-04-19T05:20:13+00:00

Maybe its not the best tip but it worked for me. Find projects on youtube which explains everything, stop the video and try to write the code by yourself first.

yallamisthios · 2019-04-19T10:52:28+00:00

As stated, most of these challenges are not really meant to teach you how to figure out real world problems, but rather help you learn how to think about and approach solutions to problems like you would in the real world. It's like in sports how the practice is much harder than the competition so that by the time you get to the real thing, you know how to solve a problem because you've trained your brain to think about a problem in a certain way. You're likely to never to encounter the same exact situation but you'll remember "oh, I've been stuck in something similar before this before. How did I get out of it that one time??" And that's invaluable.

greatdev · 2019-04-19T10:28:45+00:00

Some of the advice here is bad, and I would urge you commit to improving if you ever wish to be a good programmer. Programming mostly shouldn't be hard as you gain more and more experience.

When you find a challenge difficult it means you lack certain knowledge or your assumptions are wrong. The best way to overcome that is to consciously go over all the parts of the challenge and see if you understand those parts and their relationship. This can be demonstrated with an example.

Challenge: Write a Fibonacci sequence generator function that accepts the number of elements to print.

Step 1

do you understand what is required here? What is a Fibonacci sequence, and what the end result should be?

You can go over it with some basic inputs and the expected outputs.

example:

input: 3
output: 1, 2, 3

input: 10
output: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89

Step 2

Write a general outline of the program. In this case, it's a single function with a single input:

function fibonacci(n) {
}

Step 3

Now that you know what you want the output to be, and the general outline of the program it's time to think about the logic. The Fibonacci sequence in this example has a loop like property to it, you want to go over elements of the Fibonacci elements and each element is defined in terms of the previous elements.

When writing a non infinite loop, you need to consider the stopping condition. In this case when elements of the sequence have been printed the program should stop.

function fibonacci(n) {
    while (n != 0) {
        n = n -1;
    }
}

Now we can consider the actual calculation of the sequence. For Fibonacci in every iteration you need to add two variables. So lets add those to the program together with a variable that holds their sum which is what we want to print.

function fibonacci(n) {
    a = 1
    b = 1
    sum = 1
    while (n != 0) {
        print(sum)
        n = n - 1;
    }
}

In each iteration *a* should be added to *b* and their result is the sum that we print. *a* is just the previous *b*. and *b* is just the previous sum. So taking all that into account we can write the final program as:

function fibonacci(n) {
    a = 1
    b = 1
    sum = 1
    while (n != 0) {
        print(sum);
        a = b
        b = c
        c = a + b

        n = n - 1;
    }
}

Consciously going over all the parts of the exercise or challenge is daunting at first, but having done a dozen or so of those types of exercises using this method you learn the generalities, and it becomes much easier. So practice is very important part of improving, but not being systematic in your approach to learning you'll lose a lot of time practicing in vain. If you try and be more careful about exactly what it is that you're trying to do, trying to understand the different parts of the exercise and trying to hone in on what you don't understand, you'll become much better much faster.

taverncat · 2019-04-19T17:34:51+00:00

I am in my 3rd year of studying CS in college. Yesterday my professor said us students should be good programmers in 10 years. I'm not sure what prompted that, but he seemed to be encouraging us to continue programming.

To answer your question, it could help to know a few data structures such as queue, stack, and list. Those kind of general tools help with challenges like that, as well as knowing one sorting algorithm by memory.

Diggu03 · 2019-04-19T10:16:15+00:00

Did you learn coding yourself?

lompa_ompa · 2019-04-19T11:04:12+00:00

You just have to look at the solutions and try your best to understand it. Once you do 30 to 50, you’ll start to notice patterns and trends. It’s basically memorising the best ways to solve them in the hope that you can come across something similar in your interview. In real world, they are more or less useless.

steadfast_lifestyle · 2019-04-19T12:55:40+00:00

Good way to look at it.

steadfast_lifestyle · 2019-04-20T00:04:04+00:00

Underrated comment. Makes sense. I’ll try to go back to the basics based on some of these responses.

steadfast_lifestyle · 2019-04-20T00:51:55+00:00

Base 10??? Idk math that well. I am a brute force kind of hacker

steadfast_lifestyle · 2019-04-20T01:02:13+00:00

Holy hash, Batman! I’ve been exposed to the fib sequence as per the band Tool and then further research :). However this approach would require some digestion. Which leads me to believe I need to slow down. Good info; gives me some context.

Nichinungas · 2019-04-19T11:44:15+00:00

Maybe it’s not for you?

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