Hackerrank – a little mind teasing

While developing business applications one has to work on mathematical algorithms only on rare occasions. How often do you use dynamic programming or implement integer factorization? As for me rarely if ever. And if you are in the same boat then let me suggest you a site that could bring this kind of fun back to your life. Hackerrank.com offers a vast number of mind teasing exercises that you can work on in your free time. Problems cover a huge range of the CS domain: algorithms, number theory, graphs, sorting, data structures and so on and forth. You can even use the programming language of your like. And all this without time pressure. Or if you want you can sign up for a competition and compare your skills to the other participants.

I know that there are other sites with the same features, but i really like the clean and simple (purely) web interface of hackerrank. No need for standalone apps or plugins of any kind. Just write the code, submit it, and the system evaluates your solution. That is it.

So far I have not participated in any contests; I look at hackerrank as a great opportunity to relax and to keep my mind fit at the same time. I solve problems from the Euler 80+ “contest” and share my solutions under my github site. Of course checking the solutions without solving the problems yourself ruins the fun; so I recommend to use my solutions as a reference that you can compare your version with. Or if you are just curious how a solution in C# looks like… Beside the code I will add some hints on the front page later that could help to sort out each problem without spoilers.

Have fun!