Programming challenge websites

To maintain my limited Elixir programming skills, I use coding challenge websites such as Hackerrank, Codewars, and, more recently, Exercism. The sites offer puzzles that can be solved in different coding languages. The websites have a decent online editor so you can get right into coding.

While the exercises certainly aid me in keeping up rudimentary skills in Elixir, the tasks are mostly brain teasers, which require minimal coding. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find any exercises which are about the issues I face in my daily work — things as manipulating complex data structures, mapping them to new ones, and so on.

Practicing programming like this has the same issues as using these kinds of puzzles as interview questions. Interviewee with a decade of experience is demeaned and humiliated by a seemingly simple task under the stressful circumstances. I have seen this over and over again when giving interviews, and nowadays, I am firmly against live coding.

One of the better exercises I recently solved was to simulate a bank account. No complex arithmetic is needed. You can focus on writing code, which addresses the issue elegantly with clearly defined data structures, which is the essential thing in the daily job as a coder.

Comments

I'm not a passionate developer

A family friend of mine is an airlane pilot. A dream job for most, right? As a child, I certainly thought so. Now that I can have grown-up talks with him, I have discovered a more accurate description of his profession. He says that the truth about the job is that it is boring. To me, that is not that surprising. Airplanes are cool and all, but when you are in the middle of the Atlantic sitting next to the colleague you have been talking to past five years, how stimulating can that be? When he says the job is boring, it is not a bad kind of boring. It is a very specific boring. The "boring" you would want as a passenger. Uneventful. Yet, he loves his job. According to him, an experienced pilot is most pleased when each and every tiny thing in the flight plan - goes according to plan. Passengers in the cabin of an expert pilot sit in the comfort of not even noticing who is flying. As someone employed in a field where being boring is not exactly in high demand, this sounds pro...

Canyon Precede:ON 7

I bought or technically leased a Canyon Precede:ON 7 (2022) electric bike last fall. This post is about my experiences with it after riding for about 2000 km this winter. The season was a bit colder than usual, and we had more snow than in years, so I properly put the bike through its paces. I've been cycling for almost 20 years. I've never owned a car nor used public transport regularly. I pedal all distances below 30km in all seasons. Besides commuting, I've mountain biked and raced BMX, and I still actively ride my road bike during the spring and summer months. I've owned a handful of bikes and kept them until their frames failed. Buying new bikes or gear has not been a major part of my hobby, and frankly, I'm quite sceptical about the benefits of updating bikes or gear frequently. I've never owned an E-bike before, but I've rented one a couple of times. The bike arrived in a hilariously large box. I suppose there's no need to worry about damage durin...

Extracting object properties from an IFC file with IfcOpenShell

Besides the object geometry information, IFC files may contain properties for the IFC objects. The properties can be, for example, some predefined dimension information such as an object volume or a choice of material. Some of the properties are predefined in the IFC standards, but custom ones can be added. IFC files can be massive and resource-intensive to process, so in some cases, it helps to separate the object properties from the geometry data. IfcOpenShell is a toolset for processing IFC files. It is written mostly in C++ but also provides a Python interface. To read an IFC file >>> ifc_file = ifcopenshell.open("model.ifc") Fetch all objects of type IfcSlab >>> slab = ifc_file.by_type("IfcSlab")[1] Get the list of properties >>> slab.IsDefinedBy (#145075=IfcRelDefinesByType('2_fok0__fAcBZmMlQcYwie',#1,$,$,(#27,#59),#145074), #145140=IfcRelDefinesByProperties('3U2LyORgXC2f_hWf6I16C1',#1,$,$,(#27,#59),#145141), #145142...

Koodihommia

Search This Blog