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Brain Teasers for Coders?

Posted by Cliff on from the excercise-for-your-mind dept.

calvinandhobbes asks: "There are about 200 people working on different projects and most of them do programming without having an idea of what they actually do. they have little understanding of OS internals and primitive hacking skills. I want to enthuse them by providing some challenges by which they touch upon complex computing concepts, while solving the problem. Does anyone know of a set of C-based hacks or puzzles with which I can enthuse these budding programmers and testers?"

7 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Programming Challenges by tcopeland · · Score: 3, Informative

    Programming Challenges is a nifty book by Steven Skiena and Miguel Revilla. It's a selection of problems from the Online-Judge problem set. There's a lot of nifty stuff in there - sorting, graph theory, number theory, etc.

    Best of all, when folks solve the problems, they can submit their solutions online to see if they pass muster!

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    1. Re:Programming Challenges by saintp · · Score: 2, Informative
      It's a selection of problems from the Online-Judge problem set.
      Yes yes yes! That problem set is wonderful, and would have been my recommendation had you not cold-heartedly stolen it. The problems range from easy to friggin' impossible, most are fun, some are even funny, and, as noted, you can get the results online. There are also, IIRC, message boards somewhere if you need help with a problem. Great and extremely large problem set.
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  2. More programming challenges... by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just looked on google and there's a ton of stuff. Quite interesting was Cprogramming.com's C++ Programming Challenge, but there's loads more....

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  3. topcoder by Glog · · Score: 2, Informative

    TopCoder

  4. surprised noone's suggested by yagu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Surprised noone's suggested this one yet. One of my favorites. If you can solve these puzzles, you know C.

  5. Python Challenge by migurski · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, it's not C, but the Python Challenge is an excellent multilevel programming riddle. Each level builds upon discoveries from previous levels, and encourages deep exploration of the Python library. I got about 1/3 of the way through before being stumped and running out of time to devote to it, but I bet it'd be super fun with a team working on it.

  6. Re:Good C line by drxenos · · Score: 2, Informative

    According to the C Standard, it invokes undefined behavior. So, answer is anything the compiler wants it to do.

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