A while back I was searching the web. And lately that seems to be the only thing I have been doing, plus Facebook. I was thinking of designing a website. Wanted to get on the internet wagon. Make millions of dollars, become rich and not have a care in the world. So I entered in the search term, “What are some good programming problems”. The search term really didn’t relate to websites, but it was late, I was tired, and I was following a train of though. So, the following popped up.
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What are some good websites for programming puzzles? – Stack Overflow
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Programming Interview Questions
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Programming Problems and Solutions
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Programming Questions
If you want some really good programming challenges go to the facebook puzzles page ….It is easy to come up with a solution to this problem: sort it then …
programmingquestions.blogspot.com/ – Cached – Similar
After checking out these site I then I talked to a friend, the same guy, who suggested that I sell the diskettes on e-bay. he suggested that I check out this site and do the programming problem. The way he talked about it, it sounded like it would be great fun.
This one has a problem that high school students can solve. So I’m trying to solving it, unfortunately the high schoolers who are solving it are best in the nation at programming. Also like the search terms I have gotten a little side tracked. I was able to graphically represent the problem. Which I’m rather proud, that I was able to accomplish that little task, of course that is not apart of the problem. I also decided to use C, instead of a language I actually really know. That has been a rather a little harder then I thought. It has been more years then I care to say since I really programmed in it. Clever me, I thought it was a good idea to do something fun and get back into a fun language. Well, I started to get a little discouraged when it took me over a day to to pass a 2 dimensional array into a function. And still haven’t passed it in the way I wanted. Then I spent several days just trying to display the room right, when my friend told me he spent a hour solving the problem, and he thought it was too much time. And of course on the website they say it should take no more then a day. I plan to get back to it after a couple of weeks to think the problem through.
However, in my clever way I have been able to get help. Programmers are pretty amazing, whenever I have gotten stuck, and not really sure how to solve the program. I will usually talk to a friend or 2 or a bunch and say I have this interesting programming problem. After asking why am I trying to solve this problem, they get curious and seem to have a very nice solutions to my problem. Of course, if we have been friends for a while, they will usually know that I’m stuck and that I haven’t clue about what I’m doing. And out of the kindness of their hearts they will direct me to a solution. Also it is a cool way to geek out because then we start talking about other things, which of course don’t relate the problem at hand. It seems that programmers or people who work with computer can get sidetrack quite easily.
Actually this program has been pretty fun, I’m actually starting to clear out the cobwebs from my brain. The problem will get solved, sometimes it is best to just step away and then attack it again, later, weeks. I started out to program the problem and get back into C, nothing more.