From The Challenges - LispExploring the software engineering lessons we can learn from the solutions I've seen.
Hi this is John with this week’s Coding Challenge. 🙏 Thank you for being one of the 89,438 software developers who have subscribed, I’m honoured to have you as a reader. 🎉 If there is a Coding Challenge you’d like to see, please let me know by replying to this email📧 Welcome To Coding Challenges - From The Challenges!In this Coding Challenges “from the challenges” newsletter I’m sharing some of the common mistakes I see software engineers make when tackling the Coding Challenges. I’m sharing both the mistakes people make and some thoughts on how you can you avoid making the same mistakes when taking on the coding challenges or when writing software professionally. Sometimes we have to make mistakes to learn from them, somethings we can learn from other people’s mistakes, then make our own new ones! 😀 Recapping The Build Your Own Lisp Interpreter Coding ChallengeIn the build your own Lisp interpreter coding challenge the goal was to write an interpreter for the Lisp programming language. Lisp is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language suited for a wide variety of industry applications. It is probably most widely know for being the programming language built into the Emacs editor. It was used to build Hacker News (Paul Graham is a Lisp fan), Grammarly, Circle CI (actually using the modern dialect Clojure) and Boeing also use Lisp. 🚨Would You Like To Learn Go By Building Coding Challenges! 🚨I’m running the Coding Challenges Learn Go By Building Live Course again in September. It is a live course that runs for three working weeks from September the 15th to the October the 3rd. During the course I’ll introduce you to ever aspect of Go that you need to build the following five real-world projects (based off five of my coding challenges): 🏗️ cat - By building cat you learn how to build and run command line programs in Go. 🏗️ sort - By building sort you learn how to use Go's data structures and control flow to implement sort. 🏗️ curl - By building curl you learn how to write network clients in Go. 🏗️ wc - By building wc you learn how to process text data and handle locales with Go. 🏗️ Memcached (Capstone Project) - By building a Memcached server clone you learn how to build efficient network servers in Go. Having built these five real-world applications you will be well equipped to take on new projects in Go! Check out the Coding Challenges Learn Go By Building Live Course for full details and to sign up. If You Enjoy Coding Challenges Here Are Four Ways You Can Help Support It
Five Common Mistakes Software Engineers Make Solving The Lisp Interpreter Coding ChallengeI’ve pulled together this list of common mistakes from the hundreds of submissions I’ve been sent privately and the many shared in the Coding Challenges Shared Solutions GitHub Repo. Mistake 1 - Not Writing TestsMost of the solutions to the Lisp interpreter coding challenge that I’ve seen have tests, but some don’t and that is, in my experience, a big mistake. Why? Because even for a small language like Lisp or C the number of possible programs you can create is infinite. Therefore to validate the correct performance of your interpreter (or compiler) you’ll need a lot of tests. How many tests? Well, for example the most recent version of the JavaScript (ECMAScript) language has over 50,000 tests! And the standards committee (TC39) still does not believe it is complete! If you’re curious you can find the test suite in the Test262 Github repo. Mistake 2 - Not Building A Lexer/ScannerBuilding an interpreter is the perfect project to learn about building a lexer/scanner and a parser. I think it’s a mistake to then use find and replace or regex to reformat code so you can simply split on spaces to then parse the code. Yes it’s a ‘clever’ solution. No it’s not getting the most out of completing this coding challenge. If you want to learn about building a lexer/scanner check out the excellent book Crafting Interpreters, chapters 4 and 16 will show you how. Mistake 3 - Using The Same Name As A Builtin FunctionI’m always hesitant to call a function the same name as a function that is builtin to a programming language. There’s two reasons why:
Mistake 4 - Not Learning Lisp / Doing This Project!After you’ve mastered one programming language, learning another, different one can help broaden your skillset, showing you different techniques and idioms. I think Lisp is a great example of that and you’re missing out if you don’t learn a bit. Mistake 5 - No Project OrganisationI was shown a few projects where the code, tests (if they existed) documentation and other assets were all in the top level directory. Nothing was organised. It’s trivial to create a few folders, say: To organise the project and it makes it much easier for someone else to pick up the project. Or even for you to, in 6 to 12 months time. Request for FeedbackI’m writing these coding challenges and this new from the challenges series to help you develop your skills as a software engineer based on how I’ve approached my own personal learning and development. What works for me, might not be the best way for you - so if you have suggestions for how I can make these challenges more useful to you and others, please get in touch and let me know. All feedback greatly appreciated. You can reach me on Bluesky, LinkedIn or through SubStack Thanks and happy coding! John P.S. If You Enjoy Coding Challenges Here Are Four Ways You Can Help Support It
Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Coding Challenges, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.
|
Don't miss a thing Confirm your subscription Hi there, Thanks for subscribing to fitgirl-repacks.site! To get you up and running, please confirm your email address by clicking below. This will set you up with a WordPress.com account you can use to manage your subscription preferences. By clicking "confirm email," you agree to the Terms of Service and have read the Privacy Policy . Confirm email ...
Comments
Post a Comment