Some weeks ago in Mikamai we started using codewars, a website that aims to improve your programming skills via gamification with code challenges.
Since I’m a junior developer willing to improve my Ruby knowledge I have used it a lot lately, so let’s see how it works.
After signing up and completing a simple code problem, you can start browsing some kata and boost your programming skills.
Why kata? Codewars has this oriental, martial arts flavor so you’ll find words like kata and train for quizzes, kyu and dan to classify user rankings.
Personally I’m really enjoying the site and the learning process.
The number of Ruby katas is huge, and I find expecially nice the chance to see other users solutions after you complete a kata, so you can see super-compact solutions such as:
def anagrams(word, words)
words.select { |w| w.chars.sort == word.chars.sort }
end
or regular expressions usage to solve a wide range of problems:
def pig_it text
text.gsub(/(w)(w+)*/, '21ay')
end
and you can write your own tests while you’re training a kata.
You can choose among many programming languages (I’m looking forward to see Elixir or Rust in the future).
