Enlighten your coding skills as you would play a video game
Game your way to coding success
If you don’t use it, you lose it
We all know that becoming a solid software developer is not something that happens in a day.
However, one should not stop learning when he knows enough coding to land a good job. Coding is an exercise like running, swimming, or playing a musical instrument: if you don’t practice enough, you will get rusty.
It’s worth noting there are several categories of coding problems which we do not usually exercise in our everyday jobs, like algorithms to deal with sorting, searching, compressing, cryptography, artificial intelligence, machine learning, combinatorics, or geometry…
Not only that, but as time goes by, other paradigms come forth in order to solve problems in a faster and more clever way, like Functional Programming and Reactive Programming.
Leveling up
That said, there is just one way to keep sharp on software development: practicing. Now tell me: do you revel in leveling up while playing videogames, solving a Rubik’s cube, or even doing crosswords?
So why not taking coding challenges as well?
I believe that every self-respecting software developer should put aside some weekly time to solve coding challenges. I personally strive for doing at least one short challenge per day. Over time, it starts to get entertaining, fun, and even addictive!
There are quite a few good websites that can provide great coding challenges to play with, leveling from 101 to top-notch. The beauty of it is that you will learn a lot when you compare your solution with others from the community. I believe that this way I will turn out to be a better developer on the long run. Besides, they end up being great puzzles to play with!
These are short code challenge websites:
If you would rather taking longer and more complex challenges (and sometimes get prizes for it):
And if you only want to have fun, there are real videogames that you have to code in order to progress:
Give them a try and rejoice!
Originally published at www.avenuecode.com/code-highway on January 30th, 2015.
Published in Techspiration + Ideas + Making It Happen.
