It is been a year since I started my software development journey and I remember at my first school our facilitator would always insist on us doing at least one coding challenge per day on codewars and it was always a challenge for me since I have never known how to crack it down. At the moment I'm at Microverse and there are coding challenges that I should do as an individual and we also get to do some in our stand-up team through mob-programming. Most of the times I prefer having my coding partners solve then I follow along but this is one thing I would like to crack:- the ability to solve a coding challenge and why it's important to me as a developer
Importance of solving coding challenge
- Re-evaluation of one's problem-solving skills
- Peeks into how your mind works
- Builds your brain to easily identify patterns of solving coding challenges.
- It is mostly used in interviews as programming assignments designed to show if an applicant is good enough to solve problems, adhere to practices and write code that would make reviewers happy to want to have someone with such work in their team. (software developers from the company mostly review the interview coding challenges or sites with coding challenges are outsourced to help with this step like codewars, hackerrank, leetcode among others.
- They also help one grasp the basic concepts of the programming language and the ability to use the language to solve real-world problems.
Here is a little advice/opinion I've gathered from other experienced developers on how to tackle a coding challenge in order to understand it better before actually solving it on the editor:
Been looking for a number of opinions and advice from developers who are good with the coding challenges on how they best handle the coding challenge to the point of getting the tests to past since sites like Codewars uses TDD test cases to check your solutions. Your final answer will be checked if it passes a number of test scenarios.
some of the common steps to keep in mind while solving coding challenges include:-
- Read the instructions or problem description at least three until you understand well.
Mostly when I visit the challenge I just see the title "FizzBuzz" or "Max-min" and I just assume it requires me to write a handle a case that takes multiples or 3 & 5 without reading. So this is one case I should since in the end might have taken a lot of time-solving then run the answer get errors. Later on, get to realize that the instructions were different from how I perceived maybe it wanted one to print true or false instead of "fizz" & "buzz".
- Try to understand the logic and syntax of the challenge or function to be solved
If working in pair-programming or mob try to reason out together on the logic of the challenge. If you should use a range, numbers, array, string, loops, etc.
- Understand the goal of the challenge
Fizzbuzz might take numbers let's say from (0 to 1000), return either fizz(multiples of 3), buzz(multiples of 5), or Fizzbuzz(multiples of 3&5)
Rewrite instruction and try to solve on paper. This saves time and gives a better solution.
After which you can solve of on the editor after gotten a hint of what is expected of you. With frequent solving of coding challenges, your experience will improve and you'll the best impact out of it.