Keeping Up with your coding skills (and the Kardashians)

Are you looking for ways to get better at your coding skills, but not wanting to build an entire new app for it? You’re looking for a new job and need to prep for your technical interview? Well then, you’re just like me. Luckily, there’s many resources online that’ll do just that, and I’ll outline a few of them and what I like about them for you below.

Code Wars

Code Wars is an educational website used for learning and practicing code through various challenges. The core concept of the site, and the other two that I’ll be outlining is solving the problem, or what they call kata, given to you. You might be asked something like “Find and return the number in the array that appears 3 times.” And from there, you would code your solution. You can earn points and increase your rank by solving kata, but you can also increase your honor. On Code Wars, the more Honor you have, the more privileges on the website you gain. You gain Honor by being active. That includes completing kata, translating kata, voting, and some other ways. These privileges include approving kata, creating kata, and marking answers as spoilers.

I personally really like Code Wars. I haven’t completely dove into what Code Wars has to offer, but the immediate feedback and feeling of achievement has me coming back to it. The simple interface is easy to use, and getting set up is super easy. Just sign in with your Github, select the languages you want to focus on, and go. It’s that easy.

HackerRank

HackerRank is a great tool especially for those who are going to be in the job search. Similarly to Code Wars, the basic premise is just completing a problem, but HackerRank has some nifty tools that are designed to prepare you for your technical interviews. HackerRank’s interview prep tool sets up a series of programs designed to prepare you for your interview in up to a week’s time. On your profile page, you’ll find a preparation kits section, and you can select if you want to prepare in a week, a month, or 3 months. The week prep is broken up day by day, while the month and 3 month are broken up into weeks. You’ll receive a series of challenges that are designed for your skill level and getting you ready for the interview challenge. After your daily or weekly challenges, you’ll receive a mock test that encompasses your learnings.

HackerRank provides excellent tools for those looking for a job and need a structured system to prepare. I would definitely recommend using this when on the job hunt.

LeetCode

I’ll be honest, I haven’t used LeetCode at all. I’ve been told about it by a ton of people, but I’ve been very comfortable with Code Wars and HackerRank that I haven’t wanted to check it out. So, I’m going to give you my live reactions to me checking out LeetCode for the first time.

Once I’ve signed in, I’m greeted to a really beautiful explore page. This page has a bunch of different cards, ranging all the way from Arrays 101 to preparing for your Google interview. This is a nice change of pace as this seems very focused on the learning aspect of things, rather than being handed random problems in a set language. I’ve clicked on Arrays 101, and am brought to the landing page which gives me a well thought out introduction and explaining what I’ll be doing over these 6 lessons. These lessons have a ton of learning in them, along with solving challenges on your own. LeetCode also has monthly challenges that are solely focused on completing challenges and competing with others. I’ll be honest, there’s a lot of stuff going on everywhere else on the website, which is cool, and definitely something to dive deeper into, but at a first glance is a whole lot to handle. I’m going to pass on it for now, but I will say that for a beginner getting into code, I think this is probably your best bet among the three.