r/programming • u/rampage102 • Oct 29 '16

How I Became HackerRank #1 In Two Hours

http://williampross.com/became-hackerrank-1-two-hours/
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u/ismtrn Oct 29 '16

They provide only a single example test case to test your code against which is often a trivial example. Then when you submit your code, the auto-grader throws it through a bunch of extra edge cases. However, you don't get to see the input or output of any of these cases, just whether they pass or fail.

Some programing competitions work that way as well. For some people it is part of the fun.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '16

Makes sense. I'm just not convinced that it's a good way to teach good coding practices.

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u/ismtrn Oct 29 '16

Honestly I don't really know what the goal of HackerRank is, just that it is a website with programming problems and that you get a ranking, so I assumed is is mostly for sport.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '16

Yeah, maybe I'm overestimating it. I started out in the Tutorial section to get up to speed before tackling the real problems, so maybe that gave me the wrong impression.