Père, mari, développeur, geek, coffee lover, amateur dans beaucoup de domaines
Hello world!
During my Diploma of Higher Education, I wanted to go deeper in algorithmic and wanted to train on the skills I just got.
That was my mindset when a friends of mine shown me codewars. An online platform which gives you programming exercises with a text block where you can construct and submit your solution. Despite my today low level, I really like this platform and I often go on to practice and learn on it.
I never really interested myself in other platforms like rootme or codinggames. Not by codewars membership. On the first hand, I don't really like the rootme domain. So I don't go on. And, on the other hand, I prefer the codewars exercises approch than the codinggames one. It is only a personal feelling.
Why do I prefer CodeWars?
Firstly, I just enjoy its simple exercices structure:
- A statement
- A plain practice zone (without completion or other help)
- A first test list which you can update to add/remove your ones if you need
And that's all.
I like its social dimension too. I don't know if it's possible in other platforms but, in codewars, once you complete or give up a kata (the exercise name), you can see the solution of the others members.
This is really helpful to learn other practices, ways to think, ... This feature helped me a lot to level up in python programming. I resolved exercises with my knowledge, and then, looked other solutions to see the most upvoted ones. In them, I found a lot of python syntax tips which helped me to be more concise and cleaner in my solutions.
Another good part of that is the possibility to comment solutions. This allows you to ask questions about techniques you don't really get or give tips to people with a level lower than yours.
On codewars, a lot of katas are available in multiple programming languages (to be clear, mainly in JS and Python).
This is really cool, in that way, you can work with the one you prefer on the moment. For example, I often work in Python to train my algorithmic skill, but I like to train my Java or JS skill on codewars too. So, sometimes, I redo some exercices in another language to check if I can adapt the first solution. Be careful, this is not always an easy exercise.
With the language parameter, you can filter the kata you want by level (comparing to yours) and by tags. This is very useful to follow your desires/needs.
Note: The tags list in the screenshot is non-exhaustive. I let you check on the platform if you want to see some other ones!
A last word to introduce to you the levelling system. It is simple and inspired by martial arts. You start at the eighth kyu. You can train yourself on katas. Depending on the exercises you complete, you will be updagred to the seventh and upper to the first kyu. For the best developers, you can find the first and second dan. The second one is the biggest level available for a member. Exercices stopping themself to the first kyu. If you want to learn more about the rank system, I let you read the codewars documentation right here: https://docs.codewars.com/gamification/ranks
There is an honor system too, but I will not explain it in this article because it is secondary in your first codewars steps.
I will write some articles on this blog to share with you some exercises I did on codewars. And, may be one day, an article to introduce you the first kata I sumbit myself on codewars (we can't know what the future reserves).
Say me in comments if you looking forward that!
It was Macdrien for Macnews, Good bye world.
