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Project Euler #912: Where are the Odds?

(projecteuler.net)
165 points fzliu | 2 comments | 14 Oct 24 20:27 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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joshlemer ◴[15 Oct 24 02:06 UTC] No.41844227[source]▶
I've been thinking recently about how things like Project Euler, LeetCode, and to a bit less of an extent, Advent of Code, are so heavily focused on making clever use of math, data structures and algorithms, that it makes them suboptimal as a tools for getting familiar with a new programming language.

I know that that critique isn't new to anyone but it makes me think about how it would be cool if there were a code puzzler site that is specifically geared towards little self-contained tasks that are more to do with forcing you to get familiar with the common everyday tasks of software development.

Some example puzzlers could be like:

- open an http server on port 80

- open a file and write this data to it

- write temporary files to a location, deleting them when process exits

- query a database

- deal with such and such error scenario

- find a way to test this component

- bundle this code as an executable

- sanitize user input here

- make this behavior configurable

- take the config from environment variable variable and/or config file and/or arguments

- parse this data file

You do get a bit of parsing and file handling with Advent of Code but imagine a series of dozens of small problems that grill you on every corner of the python filesystem api. Would be a lot less dry than reading docs cover to cover.

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1. CSMastermind ◴[15 Oct 24 04:10 UTC] No.41844869[source]▶
The best recommendation I have for anyone trying to learn a new programming language is to try and program a board game.

There will be clear rules (business logic), UI, etc.

It's a confined enough problem that you can implement it without too much effort but deep enough that you can get a feel for how that programming language, framework, whatever works.

Plus there's a near endless set to choose from and it's easily scalable to the level of complexity you want. If it works add AI players, network play, etc.

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2. pncnmnp ◴[15 Oct 24 05:01 UTC] No.41845106[source]▶
I think we are a bit alike in our views, but I have a slightly different take on it. I consider coding something like a Chip-8 emulator to be more fun and optimal. It gives a holistic view of the language - you get to work with simple graphics, sound effects, and gain a feel for memory operations and data structures, as well as control structures like conditionals, looping, and exception handling. If that’s not all - for beginners, it provides an introduction to virtualizing CPUs with registers, stacks, opcode handling, memory units, arithmetic/bitwise operations, and more. You’ll even learn a bit about concurrency and synchronization, and by extension, threading. Also, performance optimization.

I suppose a decent game project could achieve these things too, but the real fun of Chip-8 is in throwing different ROMs at it and debugging the issues until it’s perfect enough to play all your favorite games!