10 Puzzle Websites to Sharpen Your Programming Skills
Solving programming puzzles is a fun way to develop your logical and problem solving abilities. Also, when you’re familiarizing yourself with a new programming language, solving puzzles for that language can help speed up the learning process.
Here are the top 10 popular programming puzzle sites that will help test your thinking and improve your programming, problem solving, and logical thinking skills.
1. Programming Praxis
Programming Praxis is a blog that includes a range of interesting problems with solutions usually available in several different programming languages.
2. CodeKata
CodeKata is a blog of programming puzzles written by Dave Thomas, who’s most famous for the groundbreaking book, Pragmatic Programmer. The puzzles involve many issues that are directly relevant to real world programming so this is a good place to brush up on your coding skills.
3. TopCoder
TopCoder is an active programming community of developers who love to solve puzzles. There are many active challenges and some of them with cash prizes.
4. Project Euler
Quoted from their front page: "Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve " The puzzles featured on the site range from relatively trivial to seriously complex!
5. Facebook Engineering Puzzles
Facebook has a collection of very challenging programming puzzles that–should you manage to solve them–could result in you getting a job at Facebook! Solutions are accepted in a variety of languages including Erlang, PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby.
6. Python Challenge
Python Challenge features riddles that ask you to write small Python programs to solve. The difficulty level gets progressively harder and more cryptic. This is an excellent site for programmers/developers that like problem solving!
7. Al Zimmermann’s Programming Contests
Al Zimmermann’s self-described "arena where demented computer programmers compete for glory and for some cool prizes" is a great way to participate in the programming community. Contests run every six months.
8. Ruby Quiz
Ruby Quiz is a collection of Ruby programming challenges that is updated weekly. Although made for Ruby, these challenges can be solved in other languages.
9. C Puzzles
C Puzzles features programming puzzles specific to the C Programming language (and all of its quirks). Since many languages are C-style or derived directly from it, even if your native programming tongue isn’t C, there’s a strong likelihood that you’ll still appreciate and understand these puzzles.
10. 99 Prolog Problems
99 Prolog Problems is suited to the Prolog programming language but people have provided solutions in Python, Ruby, Haskell, Scala and others. Working your way through these problems is a wonderful way to pick up a new language.
* Bonus: Mind Cipher
Mind Cipher wasn’t included in the top 10 because this site doesn’t require you to do any programming. It does, however, include the "world’s greatest brain teasers, logical puzzles and mental challenges", so if you’re just out for a quick mental workout this is the place to go!
Do you know of any other good programming puzzle sites, or perhaps specific challenges? Leave a comment, and/or send me a tweet!
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65 Comments
Jef
October 16th, 2009
Nice post, very useful.
techprism
October 16th, 2009
Nice post. Taking out some of the best programming sources for coders, like me who want to just dive in the program ocean.
Coding is Power.
Dude
October 16th, 2009
Javabat anyone?
Robert
October 16th, 2009
Interesting, thanks for the links.
Autonomy
October 16th, 2009
Thanks Ben for the post. I really like the CodeKata and Ruby Quiz sites. Mind Cipher is pretty fun too, I’m glad you included it.
Sathya
October 16th, 2009
Osix.net!
spoj fan
October 16th, 2009
spoj.pl is the best site. Much simpler interface then topcoder. Has Python!
Charlie
October 16th, 2009
http://www.spoj.pl is also a great place for programing puzzles.
Joseph
October 16th, 2009
How could you forget about: http://uva.onlinejudge.org/ ?
Aaraventin
October 16th, 2009
Great post. I was actually asked this coding question in an interview with Microsoft:
http://mindcipher.net/puzzle/176-power-of-2-microsoft-interview-
David Bolton
October 16th, 2009
I publish a monthly programming Challenge for developers in C, C++ and C#. Up to #28.
David (Also in London!)
strahil
October 16th, 2009
http://3564020356.org/
there’s just no other
Celebter
October 16th, 2009
oh ok, but not on a friday afternoon :p
Reid
October 16th, 2009
Awe come on… HackThisSite.org is awesome! (a different type of puzzle but one none the less)
Ryan Mitchell
October 16th, 2009
Hackthissite.org Programming missions are really good (http://www.hackthissite.org/missions/programming/).
I highly recommend the rest of the site to web developers – it helps to be aware of security vulnerabilities.
Leahn Novash
October 16th, 2009
Impressive how the Valladolid site was forgotten by the article, as it is the basis for the world competition. Fortunately, it has been mentioned in comments. Also, google for USACOGATE.
Eric B.
October 16th, 2009
These are some very fun puzzles. Project Euler has really helped to improve my programming skills.
Parag Shah
October 17th, 2009
Thanks for this fantastic list.
If anyone is looking for computer science lecture videos, I am aggregating various CS course videos at http://www.adaptivelearningonline.net (There are about 16 courses at the time of writing this).
Elyas
October 17th, 2009
A good place to brain storm on these problems (especially Project Euler) without launching an IDE would be algorithmatic.com
Jennifer
October 17th, 2009
Thanks for posting this list! You must of read my mind; I was looking for a challenge to apply my PHP knowledge. This post is quite timely!
Benoit
October 17th, 2009
Waow! Merci infiniment!!!
David Sinclair
October 17th, 2009
Great post, there should exist a site with more news/stuff related to programming I’m really sad there isn’t.
Varrun Ramani
October 18th, 2009
You should include spoj.pl among the top. It is the perfect site for improving your programming skills, as it contains problems from various problem set types :- DP,greedy,geometry etc.
Amit
October 19th, 2009
Hello,
I’d also like to mention http://www.codechef.com, we run monthly algorithm challenges, have a lot of practice problems and an active community discussing approaches and solutions.
Cheers,
Amit
Dave Laljee
October 19th, 2009
For set based T-SQL challenges check here:
http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/tc/default.aspx
M. Ahmad Sheikh
October 19th, 2009
Nice effort brother, That one i was looking for… :)
Stefano Ricciardi
October 23rd, 2009
I am about to start learning Ruby and these sites are exactly what I need to get my feet wet with some concrete example to work on.
Thank you for sharing.
Scott Schnaars
October 23rd, 2009
Reminded me of http://notpron.org that I got addicted to a few years ago. Fun programming sites, mostly HTML & PHP, but a fun riddle never the less.
Pratik Kelkar
October 25th, 2009
Something new – the monthly “Ruby Programming Challenge for Beginners“.
ilya
October 25th, 2009
codegolf.com
Robert
November 23rd, 2009
Nice one, I knew some of the sites (like project euler, top coder, ruby quiz), however most of them are new to me. I would also add project eureka(http://projecteureka.org) to this list, since it’s a super set of all possible puzzles.
elasolova
November 24th, 2009
Check out http://www.javaist.com There are some fun Python challenges.
mavis311
December 8th, 2009
Yeah, I’m sort of shocked that javabat isn’t on the list
shibi
January 16th, 2010
yeah,thats what i am looking for.. thanks
Paul Tatum
February 4th, 2010
I especially liked the Prolog link, I haven’t melted my brain for a while, so it looks like it’s going to be suffering again…. Cheers!
Hugoagogo
February 5th, 2010
oh no, i can see this post createing a new black hole in my free time
dharmasam9
March 3rd, 2010
this is nice
making a perfect path for programming lovers :)
CVS
April 4th, 2010
Here are a couple more programming puzzles to puzzle you…
http://2600hertz.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/ipl-the-run-chase/
http://2600hertz.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/the-mystery-spiral/
Good Luck!!
John
April 21st, 2010
How about programming games like Corewar etc? http://corewar.co.uk
Nitish Kumar
April 25th, 2010
codechef.com is also a good site for practice .
DD
May 2nd, 2010
i like this website
ARTisani
May 10th, 2010
Interesting sites.
Will check them out.
Thanks
Amit
June 27th, 2010
can some one give me sites like this for math?
Rob
June 29th, 2010
I could use these for sharpening my programming skills. Thanks.
Lance
July 21st, 2010
I like the mind cipher and the Project Euler. Very simple site without the unnecessary stuff.
sir jorge
July 27th, 2010
great stuff here, wish i had them when i was first learning programming
Lauris
August 19th, 2010
BIG thanks for the list.
kishor
October 25th, 2010
many many thanx for example….please continue providing more examples in functions
Abhi
January 9th, 2011
Great post, very much needed for any passionate programmer. i was exactly looking for this
Janto
January 26th, 2011
I like this! Nice and useful. I appreciate your job.
Regards
Mark
March 5th, 2011
CodeEval (www.codeeval.com) also has loads of programming challenges.
Anand
May 24th, 2011
Useful information:)
nazmul
May 29th, 2011
this is nice post.That one i was looking for
Jigsaw
June 1st, 2011
Nice list. Taking a look at Ruby Quiz right now. Bookmarked!
Michael
June 17th, 2011
Project Euler is great! I’ve been tinkering around on it for years. Thanks for this great list. I’m looking for some material to tutor some new developers in an obscure programming language (DXL). I’m going to try C Puzzles to see if that will work for our needs. Cheers!
Vikram
June 28th, 2011
Nice puzzles:)
gaurav chaudhary
June 30th, 2011
nice collections of programing websites…I like this…
Peter G
July 27th, 2011
Great links! thanks for sharing!
M_Waqas
August 3rd, 2011
it`s a great appurtunity to finding efficient collection/tutorials.outstanding material of progs..!
mit
August 25th, 2011
very cool article and great links…..really had great fun in solving these problems
David
August 30th, 2011
A very helpful article..Thanks a lot, Ben. God Bless You :-D
Jai Singh
September 7th, 2011
Very good links…..
SD
November 2nd, 2011
why php is not published this one
Kartik
December 13th, 2011
http://www.interviewstreet.com is also one of the sites growing up pretty fast… has a pretty simple interface and some very good programming puzzles..
D
March 5th, 2013
Easy to hard problems.
Cash prizes.
All free programming languages are allowed!
http://code.google.com/codejam/
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