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Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

codecrafters.io

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Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#11

Post by sarupbanskota »

automatoney wrote: post #8

How long does it take to develop new challenges with support across all of the languages you have? And how scalable is that process? This looks super cool, and a fun way to spend some of an education stipend (that for me mostly goes unused) but I'm not sure how many times I'd want to re-implement git in additional languages. At the moment it looks like there's git, redis, docker and sqlite as challenges (that have va…

You're read correctly about the challenges available. A new one ships next week!

Today it takes us ~2 weeks to build the "core" parts of a challenge (planning, stage instructions, tester etc). From then on, the changes are incremental (adding support for more languages, better hints/instructions, getting experts to provide feedback on solutions etc).

Hard to say how much time the incremental changes take because they’re done over a span of months, but it’s definitely work. At times our community pitches in to add language support: https://github.com/codecrafters-io/languages

Paul also did a series of tweets when we were building the SQLite challenge if you’d like to see what the challenge-building process is like: https://twitter.com/RohitPaulK/status/1421517393780740100

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#12

Post by automatoney »

scottydelta wrote: post #10

I like the idea but the price seems very high and it’s not even for continued access but a subscription for a limited time. The kind of experienced engineers you are targeting are also the people capable of doing this kind of learning on their own. But if someone’s employer is paying for it then it helps expedite the learning because of the guided process you guys provide.

They're not "experienced engineers" but I could see this being useful at the new grad/early career level - where people can code (and leetcode) but there's maybe a need for a more guided class-like experience, especially when it comes to breaking down tasks and working on a larger piece of software.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#13

Post by wnolens »

The price for 3mo doesn't seem high to me at all IF that ought to be enough to complete a single project with 1-2h/day. Coding books cost upwards of $50-80.

So I would prefer a per project pricing. And a trial that doesn't require credit card.

Awesome idea! I'd love to contribute somehow.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#14

Post by sarupbanskota »

automatoney wrote: post #12
scottydelta wrote: post #10

I like the idea but the price seems very high and it’s not even for continued access but a subscription for a limited time. The kind of experienced engineers you are targeting are also the people capable of doing this kind of learning on their own. But if someone’s employer is paying for it then it helps expedite the learning because of the guided process you guys provide.

They're not "experienced engineers" but I could see this being useful at the new grad/early career level - where people can code (and leetcode) but there's maybe a need for a more guided class-like experience, especially when it comes to breaking down tasks and working on a larger piece of software.

Good assessment, lines up quite accurately with what we're seeing. In our post, when we said "experienced engineers", we meant more "folks with programming experience" and less "pro" users :) We've updated the post.

When we first started out, we didn't pay any attention to guidance at all, and instead focused entirely on the "challenge" aspect. At that time, it was less common for early career engineers to try out the product.

We've evolved a bit since, and now it's common for us to also see early career professionals, support engineers at devtool companies, bootcamp grads, etc. From time to time, we come across Engineering Managers who'll do our modules as a way to "stay in touch" with programming (and picking up a new language they'd been itching to learn — e.g Rust).

We're probably not suitable for someone new to programming, but otherwise all other levels are welcome and find value.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#15

Post by mritchie712 »

debarshri wrote: post #5

I think a bigger value I see with your product is replacing leetcode challenges with something like this. We often give take home assignments to our potential candidates and this would be a great fit, if the platform had features around code evaluation, ephemeral environment with seeded data that would be great. I think that is quite a big market too.

check out https://codesubmit.io/.

You can link a custom repo to it, pretty amazing experience all around.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#16

Post by sarupbanskota »

wnolens wrote: post #13

The price for 3mo doesn't seem high to me at all IF that ought to be enough to complete a single project with 1-2h/day. Coding books cost upwards of $50-80. So I would prefer a per project pricing. And a trial that doesn't require credit card. Awesome idea! I'd love to contribute somehow.

Def enough time to complete a project with 1h/day, and you can also do it in "super deep dive mode" to take full advantage of the experience. We've definitely seen engineers do that.

For example, we're now starting to introduce source code walkthroughs. Here's one going over how the Redis event loop is implemented — https://app.codecrafters.io/walkthroughs/redis-event-loop.

So as you build out your Redis project, you can study in parallel how the official source does it, learn some cool facts, and overall spend more time developing fluency with the Redis docs.

One of the ways you could contribute is adding language support. If one of our courses doesn't support one of the languages you work with, you can add support for it here — https://github.com/codecrafters-io/languages.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#17

Post by samstave »

sarupbanskota wrote: post #6
yewenjie wrote: post #4

Sounds cool but without being able to actually try a full course out, there is no way to know if I'll enjoy it.

Agreed, learning styles are different for everyone, and it's important to be able to try things out. We've added a 3-day trial for you to experience what it's like — looking forward to seeing you on the leaderboard!

What is you're "Hello, world... again" project? for the trial?

Maybe you have a small trial project for each language which you support, allowing for a quick evaluation with real results?

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#18

Post by sarupbanskota »

samstave wrote: post #17
sarupbanskota wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, learning styles are different for everyone, and it's important to be able to try things out. We've added a 3-day trial for you to experience what it's like — looking forward to seeing you on the leaderboard!

What is you're "Hello, world... again" project? for the trial? Maybe you have a small trial project for each language which you support, allowing for a quick evaluation with real results?

I think doing the first 2-3 stages of any course is usually a good enough to understand the core for the learning experience. The later stages tend to get more involved (e.g the last stage of Git & SQLite are rather tricky for most).

Good suggestion regarding having trial projects for every language, we'll consider that.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#19

Post by gbersac »

scottydelta wrote: post #10

I like the idea but the price seems very high and it’s not even for continued access but a subscription for a limited time. The kind of experienced engineers you are targeting are also the people capable of doing this kind of learning on their own. But if someone’s employer is paying for it then it helps expedite the learning because of the guided process you guys provide.

If it's done on my spare time, I don't have time to create proper test suite, proper CI... This is done for me by CodeCrafters. It helps save a lot of time.
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