11–20 of 29 posts
Take a look at http://codingkata.org/ . Best suited for playing around in a new language, but could perhaps inspire exploration of a language you are fluent in.
It's a shame Dave Thomas stopped making these.
Gah! But how would I complete a programming challenge without Google!?
If your problem is needing to look up algorithms, I'd say that copying and pasting from programming blogs and wikipedia is not a substitute for actually learning algorithms. With a very small amount of memorization and a larger amount of practice designing algorithms it can be quite easy to reinvent these techniques on the spot.
Gah! But how would I complete a programming challenge without Google!?
I recommend trying to implement a classic game (e.g. tetris). If you download the documentation for the graphics library, it's surprising how much you can do in two hours. Even without knowing the library from before. (Unfortunately, we just got internet on trains here in Norway, which have reduced my train-productivity noticeably)
I suggest programming Snakes (on a plane).
Gah! But how would I complete a programming challenge without Google!?
These problems also serve as entrance exams for Ruby Mendicant University. We release our RMU exercises as well, but they're more open ended and likely take more than two hours in most cases: http://university.rubymendicant.com/resources/learning_mater...
These usually require less time and less math skill than the already mentioned projecteuler.net problems.