Java Puzzles to Eliminate Code Fear

Updated Nov 2018 (More recursion puzzles)

The motivation behind this course came from an article titled Why Can’t Programmers Program? by Jeff Atwood. It talks about how poorly many candidates perform in coding interviews.

Surprisingly a large fraction of applicants, even those with masters degrees and phds in computer science, fail during interviews when asked to carry out basic programming tasks such as iterate over a loop and print numbers from 1 –10 . Or solve the common fizz buzz problem. And I ve experienced this first hand when I interview candidates for software development positions. They could have an impressive academic background as well as experience in various technologies and software projects, but when posed with an interesting programming problem, their code falls apart. The fact is, you don t need a college education to become a good programmer. Simply there is a big divide between people who can program and those that can t. It’s my experience that the difference has to do with mastering the fundamental building blocks of programming. And that s basically method level coding and the mastery of topics like string manipulation, lists, loops, logic and recursion. These are fundamental granular components shared by all programming languages. Think of these as the tools a programmer can use to solve problems. And you really gotta know your tools well to be proficient at the craft!