Curiouskid comments on PSA: Learn to code - Less Wrong

34 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 25 May 2012 06:50PM

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Comment author: shokwave 28 May 2012 01:04:19PM *  0 points [-]

1-20 Project Euler level.

All the projects you list are probably too challenging except the nutrition/exercise/food tracking program, I'd wager.

A suggestion on how to go from Project Euler to stronger things quickly: try some of the Google AI challenges. Planet Wars is a good spot to start. I found working on it outside of the competition to be very interesting; coding actual bots is not much more challenging than Project Euler, you can increase the difficultly level with "ooh, I'd really like to see my bot do x", and when you start thinking about how to exploit the game you end up digging through their code and learning a lot about bigger projects.

More generally, these kinds of competitions where you submit a simple piece of code to a more complex piece are a great way to step up in skill (as long as you don't try to actually compete just yet - I found that stress and time constraint to be counterproductive).