Getting Started
Get set up and start solving puzzles
Welcome!
To write and edit our code, we are going to need a text editor, and not just your average Word document or Note. Programmers have designed special code editing environments called IDEs, or Integrated Development Environments, that allow other programmers, like us, to more easily read, write, and work with our code.
Choosing an IDE
There are tons of IDEs to choose from, and there are two important types to distinguish.
The first is online IDEs, which allow coders to quickly write code and run it in the browser, with as little setup as possible. You can essentially search "[your language of choice] online IDE" and one will pop up. Here are some good online IDEs for Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, C#, and many more.
Almost no serious programmers use these IDEs, however, because they lack one important quality: file storage. If you reload the page, your files may disappear! For this reason, programmers favor desktop IDEs (meaning actual applications), which open files from your computer's file manager (Finder on Mac or File Explorer on Windows). These files are then stored in your computer for later use. Some of the most popular are VSCode (any language), PyCharm (Python), IntelliJ (Java), CLion (C/C++), and Atom (any language).
What Next?
Once you choose a language and an IDE, you're ready to begin solving puzzles. To access the input data, you can place it in a text file that lives in the same directory (folder) as your code file. Your code file may be called code.py, and you would make a text (.txt) file right next to it called data.txt. Then, you can open that content using your code. The general workflow goes like this:
- • Read through the puzzle, repeating until it makes sense.
- • Verify that the result you expect for the example data is correct
- • Brainstorm an algorithm or process that can perform the necessary task
- • Code that solution for the example data, verifying that it produces the correct result
- • Substitute the real data for the example data, run your code, and (hopefully) find the solution!
It can feel overwhelming to learn about programming - there are so many things to learn and it seems like everyone else understands it all. A lot of us that have been coding for a while can still sometimes feel that way, so don't let that stop you. It will only get easier and easier to understand.