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Awesome suggestion, that's actually one of our next features - stay tuned!

To start upvotes from the community was the best way to do it - though soon enough we'll be benchmarking solutions so you can order them by execution time.

We got hit with pretty heavy traffic, the load was causing the 500s and we've pushed a fix for it - it's ready to go, so come back and check it out!

It's our next one - we're getting close to launching it, if you drop your email in the voting, we'll make sure to let you know!

Really appreciate the balanced perspective. We're a very small team and we're constantly improving, so it's great to hear supportive feedback.

And yea, we've gotten crazy traffic, so the 500s/speed are load issues that we just pushed a fix for.

Great questions guys - we use locked-down language sandboxes on our own servers right now (github.com/codewars) for JS and Ruby. Then we're developing a Docker/LXC based server sandbox that will allow us to safely run each code submission in any language in its own container... Another OSS option out there is: http://eval.so/

Thanks for the feedback Sandrae, it's helpful to hear your perspective.

We have a lot of female users on Codewars and want to make sure everyone feels welcome. The term "Kata" are what we call our challenges, it just means "form" in Japanese - it's used in calligraphy and martial arts to describe a way to practice a pattern to excellence. As for our name, it does hint at competition, though is meant as a metaphorical war on mediocrity and the status quo.

Performance-wise our site isn't going to be as fast since we run the code on our own servers (opposed to in your browser), which has lot's of advantages for better challenges/more versatility, but makes speed a little more of an issue.

I hope you do give the site a shot, and if you have any more feedback please email me: nathan@codewars.com

Glad you were able to make the distinction, we are working on making Github's integration cleaner. The intention is to allow you to link your github account, so that you can use it for return access to Codewars. It's also meant to auto-populate your username/email and not require password - which we just realized is broken.

Sorry for the confusion on the signup Majika. We aren't asking for your Github credentials, but are offering a link to connect your Github account securely via oauth and Github.com (it’s optional). The fields for email/password are to set details for your new account on Codewars. If you accidentally entered your Github info there we can manually delete the account for you.

We do load quite a few 3rd party libraries, though only to make the user experience even better. All of these services are pretty standard and most of these should be familiar with many web developers. Intercom allows us to communicate in real-time with our users, Rollbar allows us to monitor client-side exceptions, mixpanel and google for analytics, twitter and facebook for social. You bring up a good point though that for users who wish to disable these, there are integration points within our code that would most likely cause errors to be thrown. We can certainly work on decoupling our code so that it silently ignores calls to these APIs.

No way, this brings back some good memories. Glad you're using it regularly!

That's unfortunate - just shoot me an email and we'll hook you up: nathan@codewars.com

This is awesome Steven - appreciate the support!

Thanks Winslow - glad to hear you love the site!

We want to make sure to keep the intrigue and flow going. So we're seriously thinking about how we can open more challenges while balancing it with a customized experience, great advice. Appreciate the help.

The sign in we have there is just for current users. To sign up just take the challenges on the homepage - Good luck!

Yea right now it's not a full github sign-in, but allows us to let you auto-signin when you return. We still need to other info to create the account.

Right now we save all your progress on the kata, though you need to find it again by searching/list view... We're pushing a "favorites" list soon that will allow you to earmark them for later.

Thanks - glad you like the concept. A video intro is a cool idea, we'll look into it.

The join button just isn't clear enough, when it scrolls up it's just taking you to the challenges on the monitor, since you signup through there.

Good point on the text - we'll make an update... The landing page navigation?

The webcam comment had me laughing for a few minutes. Never really noticed, but it's an easy fix.

Very sure... we promise we won't pester you. We send a weekly newsletter with challenges, but you can opt-out if it doesn't interest you.

Thanks and good catch. We do execute the code submissions on our own servers, partially so that we can prevent cheating and make sure all solutions are legit (the solutions list users see after finishing each challenge provides some of the site's greatest value)... though second is because we plan to eventually support full environments (challenges that utilize libraries, frameworks, etc.).

The speed issue is optimization on our part, we boosted the servers so it should be a lot quicker now

It's all good - we may open it beyond members eventually. The main reason for email right now is to foster a quality community... Just so you know we have strict no-emails-every-2-hours policy.

Sorry to hear that - we've done testing on Firefox/Safari and haven't gotten that, though definitely want to fix it up... Good luck getting into it later, and if you could help us debug just shoot me an email nathan@codewars.com. Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback winslow - we didn't mean to dampen your vibe. The idea is as the challenges get harder we want to make sure you get ones you care about (interest area, difficulty) - that's a good idea on rephrasing it, we could make that more apparent and give more challenges before requiring signup.

Critique really helps us improve, we love hearing it, everyone should feel free to reach out: nathan@codewars.com

We'll make that more clear - right now the Github Sign In is for current members, the signup is after the two challenges on the homepage

Glad to hear it, it's in the works - we're just deciding the order to launch them, so the voting feedback on next languages really helps us

My question is why all of the world's largest companies fall in line with this so easily, especially when some have official support for persian/Iran. How does that dynamic between Corporation and US Government really work?

http://Codewars.com, - Santa Monica, CA

The society where devs achieve mastery, is building the world's code challenge library and changing the way we improve our code skills.

We're looking for our next hires to help us achieve this - Senior Rails Developers... info@codewars.com

Ruby on Rails application, using MongoDB, Redis and a custom JS front-end (built on jQuery/SugarJS).

We’ve raised capital from prominent investors and are growing fast (Brian Lee – Legalzoom, Honest Co & Paige Craig).

Thanks for all the feedback - we got caught in the middle of a performance upgrade so the sites code challenge engine isn't working under load right now.

Really? Maybe b/c of server traffic. Let us know if it's still happening: info@codewa.rs

Appreciate the heads up, could you forward us the confirmation email: info@codewa.rs... If you go back to the site (after clearing your cookies or on a different browse) you can renter the same email and opt to resend the Confirm/Access email, that should take care of it.