
Show HN: Binarysearch.io – Learn Algorithms Together - readyoursicp
https://binarysearch.io/
======
readyoursicp
Hey everyone,

I’ve found that learning algorithms is more engaging when solving them with
other people. So, I’ve built a site to help people learn algorithms and data
structures together! I’ve worked on it with a friend for a few months and
would love your feedback.

On Binary Search, you can create or join a room with others and work on the
same coding problem together. You can choose to compete to finish the problem
first, or solve them together and help each other out.

Working with friends (or strangers!) makes for a much more engaging
atmosphere, and we’ve actually built a small community of coders who love to
help each other out! Check it out at
[https://binarysearch.io](https://binarysearch.io) — we’ll be hanging out in
some of the rooms. Let us know if you have any feedback or run into any
issues. Hope to see you around!

~~~
112
The `/api/stats` request (500) hangs the application on my side. Can't wait to
try it out, I wish there were more game-y training sites. Codewars is fun, but
knowing you're competing with other people at the same time is way more
interesting.

~~~
pseudoramble
Came here to say the same thing. This endpoint is eventually responding for
me, but it's taking between 20-30 seconds.

In addition,
[https://binarysearch.io/api/rooms](https://binarysearch.io/api/rooms) just
returned a 502 Bad Gateway. Maybe the site is getting hugged by HN.

~~~
readyoursicp
We're back open for business! Just had to cache some things :P

~~~
bananaeater
Still getting a hug of death message on my end? Edit: It's up now, looking
forward to using it.

------
pseudoramble
I like this idea! I'd like to try this out again when the API is online again,
and I can get a few other people I know online too. It was nice that
readyoursicp joined me for a few minutes in the room to chat though.

A lot of this is off-the-cuff, and not match up with what you're aiming for
here. Hopefully some of it is useful though.

1\. During the process, I couldn't quite figure out how I was doing or what I
was doing wrong. One example was the determining if a number is a palindrome
or not. I didn't see indication about if I was failing certain tests in the
test suite, or if I had an issue with syntax, etc. Some more feedback would
help here.

2\. A minor thing, but on my laptop I noticed that while the line would wrap,
the code itself is running under the chat portion of the room. Makes it harder
to edit.

3\. I think the room concept is nice, especially if I just want to jump into a
certain class of problems and go. However, it would be cool if you could have
one room indefinitely. Perhaps a private room of sorts?

4a. It would be nice if you could request the difficulty of problem in the
room itself. Right now you need to make a new room to match the difficulty,
but I think that having problems come to that room might be nice.

4b. In addition to requesting difficulty of problems, requesting kinds of
problems might be nice too. I can imagine a CS student being in some kind of
data structures/algorithms class and wanting to focus on that specifically.
Something like "medium difficulty problems involving trees" or "hard problems
involving strings."

Anyway, cool project and good work!

~~~
readyoursicp
Hey there, was super fun playing with you earlier. Thanks a lot for the
feedback -- will definitely address / fix some of your issues!

------
niftylettuce
Nice to see you're using my email forwarding service,
[https://forwardemail.net](https://forwardemail.net)!

Awesome stuff!

~~~
readyoursicp
It's great, thank you so much for making it! So much more convenient than
creating another GSuite account (and paying $6/mo) :P

------
rckoepke
Super cool! Is there a complete list of algorithms covered by this site? Does
it cover more esoteric ones like fibonacci search? Or mainly just
linear/binary search + lots of sorting algorithms?

I think it may also be good to also have some quizzing included for the
properties of the algorithms, so users not only build the algorithm but also
provide its:

\- O() / theta() / omega()

\- In what cases will the runtime of this be "O(n log n)?"

\- Is this algorithm better or worse than merge sort if you have 2^16 long int
elements and 16GB of ram?

etc etc.

Knowing how to implement algorithms helps solidify a lot of that, but in the
end the truly important thing is knowing which algorithm to use for a
particular purpose, and what the downsides are for each other algorithm.

------
crypticlizard
Great Idea. I can see there is room for monetization too. Although ads are
distracting, they could work as occasional in a room. Also, if it caught on,
this could join the likes of leetcode...Ppl would pay for this b/c peer
learning can be far more efficient or at least engaging. I can certainly see
leetcode wanting to copy this idea.

This already has something over twitch which is sort of similar but not
interactive. Also, I could see fb ads as quite effective to keep organic
traffic up and help this catch on as a competitive way to get a job. You could
even market the data you gain to companies looking to hire.

------
ktpsns
Sounds funny, but I would like to join some room without registering first. I
don't see why this service needs my E-Mail adress just that I can have some
seconds (minutes? hours?) of fun.

------
imjasonmiller
Great idea! After Java and C++, are there any plans to add support for Rust?
I'll give JavaScript a shot for now, but would love to do something like this
for Rust, as that's what I'm currently learning.

P.S. I noticed that the ".loader-container" is generating moving vertical and
horizontal scroll bars on 1920×1080 due to ".loader" rotating. Applying
"overflow: hidden" seems to fix that.

~~~
readyoursicp
Thanks for the tip -- loader should be fixed now!

We don't have any plans to support Rust at the moment unfortunately, but your
vote has definitely been noted!

~~~
mangatmodi
How about go? It is worthwhile to add most of the popular languages. I think
you can lease env from spoj.com

------
amitport
this looks very nice. I hope you keep pushing it forward!

nit-picks:

1 consider adding social sign-in. Why not? some people get scared when they
need to enter a new password (+there are some nice auth-as-a-service out
there)

2 there are too many animated buttons IMO (a few main ones are nice, but
everywhere is too much)

3 small bug: you can see the solution when open a room but before you press
'join room'

4 when saving a profile change I get no indication of success / or redirect

------
jezclaremurugan
This is awesome. If you haven't thought about it - looks like you can compete
with coderpad etc. for monetization.

------
tyiz
Login? Good Bye.

~~~
numlock86
You logged in to HN to post this nonsense. What is your point?

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sealthedeal
would love to see your traffic spikes and unique visitors by being posted to
frontpage HN!

------
svapnil
this is awesome and can really make a different in peoples lives. nice work!

~~~
readyoursicp
Thanks for stopping by!

------
basilamer
Well done friend! This is super cool

------
spacetone
Super awesome. Are you going to open source the site so others can contribute
to adding new features?

------
VirtualQuery
yet another leetcode...

~~~
numlock86
I thought I was quite familiar with leetcode. But this seems to be a different
concept. Care to elaborate how this is "yet another leetcode"?

------
blondie9x
I’m not into the idea? Interviews are to gauge an individuals abilities. Why
would you want to practice for an individual task where you will he expected
to solve individually with a group? I think this is like studying in a group
for a test. There is a huge risk you think you learn something but you don’t.

Studying for assignments in a group makes sense or comparing notes etc. but
studying for an exam in a group or an interview doesn’t.

~~~
nostrebored
Afaik this is completely counter to modern educational findings. Group work
helps to both motivate people and shore up gaps in understanding.

~~~
blondie9x
Can you cite one study that supports this claim?

~~~
numlock86
Google (Scholar) just gave me thousands. I only skimmed through three, though.

~~~
blondie9x
Link please

~~~
numlock86
[https://scholar.google.com/](https://scholar.google.com/)

