Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mattdodge 3358 days ago
Great timing considering Google Code Jam Round 1 starts tonight too
1 comments

Link? / What is it? / Is it a good thing to test out for beginners?
It's certainly good for beginners who are looking to get into competitive programming. The problems can be somewhat challenging to someone not familiar with algorithms or computer science fundamentals I think. The code for solutions often isn't complex at all, but they typically involve applying some sort of algorithm to a made-up (often funny) real world problem. You're not building a to-do list app, you're writing algorithms.

It's sort of like a word problem in high school math. The math itself is often just addition and multiplication, the hard part is figuring out which math to use and which numbers to apply it to.

All of the old problems are on the CodeJam website though so you can go check them out and give them a go!

Here's the link, but the qualification round for this year has already passed. https://code.google.com/codejam/