CodinGame – Practice coding with fun programming challenges | Hacker News Reader

CodinGame – Practice coding with fun programming challenges

codingame.com

186 pointsaakriti121559 comments

"Get hired at awesome companies"

Show picture of awful open floor plan with some jerk riding a cart around to doubly ensure you'll never be able to concentrate.

Totally this.

Reminds me of the footer of Riot Games Engineering blog[0]. The content they post is very good and interesting, and I don't doubt it must be a pretty cool company to work at, but that office photo at the bottom literally describes hell for me. I would spend my whole day there waiting for my anxiety to cause a heart attack.

[0] - https://engineering.riotgames.com/

O man that would turn me off completely.

Sure QuietComfort 35's will solve your sound issues in environments like this. I can highly recommend them!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01E3SNO3E/ref=twister_B01GJO0WO...

...but yeah, that looks particularly terrible.

I'm already a happy owner of:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/PC-Headsets/HyperX-Cloud-Gaming-H...

I actually bought two pairs. First for use at home, based on Wirecutter recommendations. They are good at silencing the environment, so I quickly bought a second pair for work...

Do you wear glasses by any chance? I haven't found a decent headphone that doesn't press the frame of my glasses to the point of giving me headache in the first hour.

I have a QuietComfort 15 and a Beyerdynamic DT-770-PRO-32. The Beyerdynamic is bigger and more comfortable on the ears, but puts more pressure so it's it hurts faster. The Bose is smaller and less comfortable on the ears, but lighter, so I can support it a bit longer.

I do. Somehow I don't think I ever had this problem; my frames touch my head all the time anyway.

Tried bose qc2 but got rid of them because of the "anti-noise" "pressure" giving me a headache after a few hours. They constantly pump sound meant to cancel the ambient noise. It was too intense for me.

Wow. That's so visually overwhelming for me.

The people in that photo seem way too comfortable with the amount of smoke pervading the building. Since there doesn't seem to be a fire alarm going off, are we left to believe that they just fishbowl the whole office in order to mellow people out so they don't mind that office layout...?

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but I think it's just the gradient?

Wow. That looks busier than a train station. Can't believe any of them can focus on anything at all.

Two jerks with two carts to be precise. Both with the number 8. I would find that incredibly frustrating.

<opinion> I've tried CodinGame for a brief while, but became less enthusiastic of using it because of the fantasy/RPG/war game theme. Personally, the visuals, the (sometimes slow) execution of the code because of the animation, and the gaming references (descriptions) distracted me from actual coding and learning.

Codewars (except for the name) has less emphasis on the in-game competition and fight. Although that visual theme is also rather dark, there's less distraction.

Personally, I'd prefer even a much 'cleaner' UX and UI. Or -- but with loss of the advantages (but also disadvantages) of coding in the browser window -- code challenges that just require a number or string to be submitted as an answer. (Project Euler, Advent of Code, Google Code Jam.) Then my whole coding environment is under my control, and the programming languages and tools to be used aren't restricted as well by the platform provided.

But having said that, CodinGame looks great (if you fancy the theme) and is really well executed. It's just not my cup of tea. </opinion>

OpenAI Gym is a much better alternative to this. It's better in every way and more importantly you're not just giving away all your hard work for free.

You can only use Python in OpeneAI Gym if I'm not mistaken.

Indeed. They say other languages are coming soon.

I wonder how much code one needs to port to be able to use another language?

Not so much but it's an old architecture that dates back before docker/container techs came around, so it's kind of a pain. We're looking into a better architecture that would allow us to add any language in a couple hours

My question was aimed at OpenAI Gym (which seems to be using Docker), but since you seeem to be involved with CodinGame, I kindly ask you to please add support for Common Lisp ;).

You're the third person to ask for this on this HN post :) I'll just copy-paste my answer now

We have a lot on our plates right now so adding new languages isn't the main priority, however we add languages based on the number of upvotes on suggestions in our dedicated forum thread

https://www.codingame.com/forum/t/please-add-the-following-p....

Do not hesitate to go there and vote/ask for Common Lisp

Thanks, I registered and did exactly that!

Also, it seems the link copied wrong; here's the correct one, if anyone else wants to vote Common Lisp (please do!) :).

https://www.codingame.com/forum/t/please-add-the-following-p...

They have a RESTful API for local Gym servers so you can connect from any language - https://github.com/openai/gym-http-api

I've not used it yet but I hope to soon!

As someone who plays this game casually for almost 2 year, I respectfully disagree. Codingame is superior in every aspect. But this is does not mean OpenAI Gym is not good.

I'll post my personal experiences with this software - it was not enjoyable and I felt it was mostly a waste of time. I didn't feel like it effectively conveyed the idea and purpose of the lessons it was trying to give. Ultimately, it was kind of a waste of time...

I had a lot more success and a lot more enjoyment with OpenAI Gym. If codingame is interesting to you, definitely save yourself some time and check out OpenAI Gym!

codingame.com is one the best casual coding websites there is. The games are all interesting and go on to teach and illustrate concepts. The contests are also really cool. Social coding brought to a whole new level.

Thank you, we appreciate this a lot :)

Nice execution.

Please mail me when you add Common Lisp, I'll come back and play ;).

will do. Not on our plans right now though. (Thibaud from CG)

Very sad to hear that :(. Is there any way one could help make it happen sooner?

Looks cool, missing my go to language though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck

There is a game about making an automaton that translates things to Brainfk though https://www.codingame.com/multiplayer/optimization/code-of-t...

Also Python is version 2 and not 3.

There is python2 and python3, they are just separated languages

My bad. I did not see the language choices in the select menu are not alphabetized. Should have looked at it more carefully before commenting.

"We support them all"... bah! Where is Forth?

A Forth based AI? Reminds me of Mentifex.

Gave you an upvote just for mentioning that - though beware, you may have summoned him.

Amazingly - from the last time I looked (only a month or so ago) - ATM is still around and ranting across the net (as much as some things change, it's nice to see he hasn't - as strange as that may sound).

I was slightly curious to see if he would appear with some ASCII art architecture diagrams.

Just wait for this thread to get indexed by Google...

you may have summoned him

ATM as Roko's basilisk is a fascinating idea...

Heck, I'm wondering where BASIC is...

I've never used VB.NET but it's pretty much basic, isn't it?

Brainfuck would be interesting.

There is a game about making an automaton that translates things to Brainfk though https://www.codingame.com/multiplayer/optimization/code-of-t....

I was disappointed to see they offer the deprecated version of Swift but no Kotlin

This looks really cool! I wonder, is there any plan for eventually supporting Common Lisp? I was a bit disappointed to see it wasn't on the list.

We have a lot on our plates right now so adding new languages isn't the main priority, however we add languages based on the number of upvotes on suggestions in our dedicated forum thread

https://www.codingame.com/forum/t/please-add-the-following-p...

Do not hesitate to go there and vote/ask for Common Lisp

This seems like a much more interesting alternative to things like codewars. I'll definitely check it out.

They have a really good onboarding flow.

Fun! What would be a really cool addition to this is unveiling the test cases one at a time. It would add an element of building your code in a flexible way when you don't know what all the requirements will be yet.

Sounds like this is a variant (and more directly competitive) than what patio11 was working on for starfighters? If so huh, wonder what makes them think they'll have better luck than starfighters did.

Full disclosure: I work at CodinGame.

CodinGame has been around since 2012, and we've seen the rise and fall of Starfighters. We are doing fine with a community of 500K+ developers, and I think the main difference with Starfighters is that we have the momentum and strength of a full company (~20 people). Our code execution backend is starting to be pretty robust now, we can make games with pretty good graphics, we have a sales team that can handle the partners of our worldcups and follow-up on the hires.

I think it would be harder today to create such a company and get the momentum we have.

Awesome, thanks for taking the time to answer.

codingame has destroyed my productivity because it is awesome

Does this have a game mode thats similar to Robocode?

blocked at my workplace because of an old ssl cert i think.

Gonna be there in 20 min. K3

https://static.codingame.com/common/images/start/background_...

What the fuck.

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