10 puzzle websites to sharpen programming skills
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10 Puzzle Websites to Sharpen Your Programming Skills
October 15th, 2009 by Ben Dowling | 26 Comments | Stumble It! Delicious
Solving programming puzzles is a fun way to develop your logical and problem solving abilities. Also,when you’re familiarizing yourself with a new programming language, solving puzzles for that languagecan help speed up the learning process.
Here are the top 10 popular programming puzzle sites that will help test your thinking and improve yourprogramming, problem solving, and logical thinking skills.
1. Programming Praxis
Programming Praxis is a blog that includes a range of interesting problems with solutions usuallyavailable in several different programming languages.
2. CodeKata
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CodeKata is a blog of programming puzzles written by Dave Thomas, who’s most famous for thegroundbreaking book, Pragmatic Programmer. The puzzles involve many issues that are directly relevantto real world programming so this is a good place to brush up on your coding skills.
3. TopCoder
TopCoder is an active programming community of developers who love to solve puzzles. There are manyactive challenges and some of them with cash prizes.
4. Project Euler
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Quoted from their front page: "Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computerprogramming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve " The puzzlesfeatured on the site range from relatively trivial to seriously complex!
5. Facebook Engineering Puzzles
Facebook has a collection of very challenging programming puzzles that–should you manage to solvethem–could result in you getting a job at Facebook! Solutions are accepted in a variety of languagesincluding Erlang, PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby.
6. Python Challenge
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Python Challenge features riddles that ask you to write small Python programs to solve. The difficultylevel gets progressively harder and more cryptic. This is an excellent site for programmers/developers thatlike problem solving!
7. Al Zimmermann’s Programming Contests
Al Zimmermann’s self-described "arena where demented computer programmers compete for glory andfor some cool prizes" is a great way to participate in the programming community. Contests run every sixmonths.
8. Ruby Quiz
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Ruby Quiz is a collection of Ruby programming challenges that is updated weekly. Although made forRuby, these challenges can be solved in other languages.
9. C Puzzles
C Puzzles features programming puzzles specific to the C Programming language (and all of its quirks).Since many languages are C-style or derived directly from it, even if your native programming tongue isn’tC, there’s a strong likelihood that you’ll still appreciate and understand these puzzles.
10. 99 Prolog Problems
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99 Prolog Problems is suited to the Prolog programming language but people have provided solutions inPython, Ruby, Haskell, Scala and others. Working your way through these problems is a wonderful way topick up a new language.
* Bonus: Mind Cipher
Mind Cipher wasn’t included in the top 10 because this site doesn’t require you to do any programming. Itdoes, however, include the "world’s greatest brain teasers, logical puzzles and mental challenges", so ifyou’re just out for a quick mental workout this is the place to go!
Do you know of any other good programming puzzle sites, or perhaps specific challenges? Leave acomment, and/or send me a tweet!
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About the Author
Ben Dowling is a passionate software developer who specializes in web and mobileapplication development. He currently works for Mendeley in London, UK, and regularly blogs aboutdevelopment at Coderholic. You can also find him on Twitter.
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26 Comments
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Jef
October 16th, 2009
Nice post, very useful.
techprism
October 16th, 2009
Nice post. Taking out some of the best programming sources for coders, like me who want to just dive inthe program ocean.
Coding is Power.
Dude
October 16th, 2009
Javabat anyone?
Robert
October 16th, 2009
Interesting, thanks for the links.
Autonomy
October 16th, 2009
Thanks Ben for the post. I really like the CodeKata and Ruby Quiz sites. Mind Cipher is pretty fun too,I’m glad you included it.
Sathya
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October 16th, 2009
Osix.net!
spoj fan
October 16th, 2009
spoj.pl is the best site. Much simpler interface then topcoder. Has Python!
Charlie
October 16th, 2009
http://www.spoj.pl is also a great place for programing puzzles.
Joseph
October 16th, 2009
How could you forget about: http://uva.onlinejudge.org/ ?
Aaraventin
October 16th, 2009
Great post. I was actually asked this coding question in an interview with Microsoft:http://mindcipher.net/puzzle/176-power-of-2-microsoft-interview-
David Bolton
October 16th, 2009
I publish a monthly programming Challenge for developers in C, C++ and C#. Up to #28.
David (Also in London!)
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strahil
October 16th, 2009
http://3564020356.org/
there’s just no other
Celebter
October 16th, 2009
oh ok, but not on a friday afternoon :p
Reid
October 16th, 2009
Awe come on… HackThisSite.org is awesome! (a different type of puzzle but one none the less)
Ryan Mitchell
October 16th, 2009
Hackthissite.org Programming missions are really good (http://www.hackthissite.org/missions/programming/).I highly recommend the rest of the site to web developers – it helps to be aware of security vulnerabilities.
Leahn Novash
October 16th, 2009
Impressive how the Valladolid site was forgotten by the article, as it is the basis for the world competition.Fortunately, it has been mentioned in comments. Also, google for USACOGATE.
Eric B.
October 16th, 2009
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These are some very fun puzzles. Project Euler has really helped to improve my programming skills.
Parag Shah
October 17th, 2009
Thanks for this fantastic list.
If anyone is looking for computer science lecture videos, I am aggregating various CS course videos athttp://www.adaptivelearningonline.net (There are about 16 courses at the time of writing this).
Elyas
October 17th, 2009
A good place to brain storm on these problems (especially Project Euler) without launching an IDE wouldbe algorithmatic.com
Jennifer
October 17th, 2009
Thanks for posting this list! You must of read my mind; I was looking for a challenge to apply my PHPknowledge. This post is quite timely!
Benoit
October 17th, 2009
Waow! Merci infiniment!!!
David Sinclair
October 17th, 2009
Great post, there should exist a site with more news/stuff related to programming I’m really sad thereisn’t.
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Varrun Ramani
October 18th, 2009
You should include spoj.pl among the top. It is the perfect site for improving your programming skills, as itcontains problems from various problem set types :- DP,greedy,geometry etc.
Amit
October 19th, 2009
Hello,I’d also like to mention http://www.codechef.com, we run monthly algorithm challenges, have a lot ofpractice problems and an active community discussing approaches and solutions.Cheers,Amit
Dave Laljee
October 19th, 2009
For set based T-SQL challenges check here:http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/tc/default.aspx
M. Ahmad Sheikh
October 19th, 2009
Nice effort brother, That one i was looking for… :)
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