If you like PE, you might love: https://brilliant.org/discussions/thread/forest-fires/ (includes in-browser Python runner, too).
Project Euler
31–40 of 172 posts
Re: Project Euler
#32Ah, memories. Back in 2010 I whinged to colleagues who were using their fancy functional languages to solve problem 1 inefficiently in 2 lines of code... " Project Euler problem 1 :- It helps to know the sum of (1 .. x) is 0.5 * n * (n+1). Multiples of 3 less than 1000 are (3 .. 999) == (1 .. 333) * 3 = 0.5 * 333 * 334 * 3 = 166833 Multiples of 5 less than 1000 are (5 .. 995) == (1 .. 199) * 5 = 0.5 * 199 * 200 * 5 =…
> It helps to know the sum of (1 .. x) is 0.5 * n * (n+1) This is cool. As someone out of full time education, and who dropped maths relatively early, where’s a good place to start learning some of this stuff? By stuff I mean things related to algebra and whatever the black magic I quoted is
to see it consider this:
S = 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + n-1 + n
+
S = n + n-1 + n-2 + ...+ 2 + 1
=
2S = n+1 + n+1 + n+1 + ... + n+1 + n+1
every column sums to n+1
Re: Project Euler
#33I really like to use project euler when I want to learn a new language. Exercises are sorted more or less by difficulty, at least for the first 50-100, and are completely langage agnostic (you just need to answer a question in a text input). It's also very good to learn algorithm and maths. Some problems can even be solved without any programming. And for some, a certain amount of math is necessary to have a efficien…
Similar w/me. I picked up Python that way.
Re: Project Euler
#34The best tool for solving these problems is a whiteboard; writing code should be seen as a last resort, and brute-force solutions should be shunned, as they provide no insight.
Some friends and I used to hold a hybrid drinking/Project Euler contest. You would have hated our solutions. I remember winning on the back of nine nested for-loops and, on a separate occasion, doing a primality check using a literal array containing the first 80,000 primes.
That's what happens when time-to-solution is what you optimize for. I'm sure it's familiar to startup programmers :).
Re: Project Euler
#35The best tool for solving these problems is a whiteboard; writing code should be seen as a last resort, and brute-force solutions should be shunned, as they provide no insight.
good luck with that
His point is correct. There are usually efficient and inefficient ways to attack each problem. It's better to solve the math problem first, before the coding problem.
Re: Project Euler
#36My favorite part of Project Euler is the solutions forum that you can access after entering the correct answer to a problem. Having different solutions to the same problem to browse though is fantastic for learning new idioms and tricks. Sadly, only a small portion of the solutions posted are retained, so if you're not looking for Python or C you'll probably only see a couple of different variations in your language…
I like this idea but project Euler seems to focus much more on math than programming languages so it makes sense they don’t retain all answers. I would really like to see something similar for actual programming challenges though. Some real-world examples, maybe with predefined test cases that you then solve and optimize for CPU/Memory/Time/lines/whatever.
That would be really cool.
Re: Project Euler
#37The best tool for solving these problems is a whiteboard; writing code should be seen as a last resort, and brute-force solutions should be shunned, as they provide no insight.
Well in TDD you tend to try to do that :)
Re: Project Euler
#38After hearing about it for years, I decided to start working through Project Euler about two weeks ago. It really is much more about math than programming, although it's a lot of fun to take on the problems with a language that has tail call optimization because so many of the problems involve recurrence relations.
I like that the problems are constructed in a way that usually punishes you for trying to use brute force. Sometimes there's a problem that doesn't have a more elegant solution, though, as if to remind us that brute force often works remarkably well.
Re: Project Euler
#39shameless plug: I loved project euler and topcoder when I in high school. In 2011, there weren't really any nice, easy-to-use, interactive websites that allowed me to solve coding/algorithms challenges online easily, so that winter break my first year of college I made coderbyte.com for people to solve challenges online. Been running it ever since, but now there are like 20 similar websites as well.
Thank you! I love coderbyte. I especially love that you can immediately go back, correct your answer and get a perfect score. There is nothing more frustrating than a competitive screening tool that masquerades as an educational tool. Emphasizing mastery over getting it right on the first try is something that I deeply appreciate.
Re: Project Euler
#40Ah, memories. Back in 2010 I whinged to colleagues who were using their fancy functional languages to solve problem 1 inefficiently in 2 lines of code... " Project Euler problem 1 :- It helps to know the sum of (1 .. x) is 0.5 * n * (n+1). Multiples of 3 less than 1000 are (3 .. 999) == (1 .. 333) * 3 = 0.5 * 333 * 334 * 3 = 166833 Multiples of 5 less than 1000 are (5 .. 995) == (1 .. 199) * 5 = 0.5 * 199 * 200 * 5 =…
> It helps to know the sum of (1 .. x) is 0.5 * n * (n+1) This is cool. As someone out of full time education, and who dropped maths relatively early, where’s a good place to start learning some of this stuff? By stuff I mean things related to algebra and whatever the black magic I quoted is
There's a legend, Gauss came up with that while an elementary student: http://www.nctm.org/Publications/Teaching-Children-Mathemati...