

Alternative to Project Euler: Open-CS- Official answers can be viewed by all - jimmyjim
http://open-cs.net/index.php
And also, new <i>problems</i> can be submitted by any user as well
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lysium
Maybe it's just me, but I find the problems on Open-CS poorly explained.

For example, in problem 9, it asks to find a number in a matrix 'generated by
the same algorithm', but neither does it tell what that algorithm is nor is it
obvious how the algorithm works, given the examples.

Similarly, in problem 20, some arbitrary tree is given with no explanation on
how it is generated or what property it has, but you are asked to return the
position of a given number in that tree.

In problem 22, numbers are divided into substrings, which makes no sense.

In Project Euler, the problems are carefully explained and demonstrated with a
small example, so that you can concentrate on actually solving the problem
instead of guessing what the author might have wanted.

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Yes
Hey, lysium, It's just you :) First of all, in problem 9, 20, it's part of the
problem to find the pattern :) And for the problem 22, an _ARRAY_ of numbers
is divided into substrings, which is possible ( and substring isn't
necessarily a part of a char string, and the problem statement clearly defined
a substring as a subset made of consecutive elements :P ) And the site is
still new, so you can't judge to such a big site as Project Euler, and the
existence of Open-CS doesn't eliminate that of Project Euler, no one ever said
it wasn't a good site Good luck in getting problems :P

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Groxx
Looks interesting. I'll probably run through it, I need to brush up on Ruby...
and I like the more-openness of it. The inability to converse before solving a
problem has been a bit of a turn-off on Euler, IMO. I can see the reason for
it, but there are times where I'd really appreciate a "cheat!" button aside
from Googling - generally because I'd prefer it to _not_ record that I solved
it when I didn't.

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jimmyjim
And, just for fun, here's my answer for problem 1 there:
<http://www.effectedcause.com/blog/?p=228>

Of course, you could recognize that it's a geometric series... and (3^15 - 1)
/ 2 would give you the answer, but what fun is it if you don't even get to use
a simple for loop when you have a perfectly good opportunity to do so. :)

~~~
warmfuzzykitten
What's your simple for loop answer to problem 2? :)

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georgieporgie
Are there any good resources for improving one's approach to Project Euler (or
Open CS) problems? I tend to brute force everything and would like to improve
and diversify my approach. However, when I search for solutions, I tend only
to find people's best-effort code, and would like to see more of a break down
of multiple approaches.

This blog seems like a good start, but more diversity and comparison would be
ideal: <http://project-euler.blogspot.com/>

