Is coding really tough for beginners? Well, to practice coding & participating in competitive programming can make it really easy to master programming. These coding challenges or contests offer the best opportunity to assess your coding skills & proficiency by letting you compare yourself with other programmers across the world.
What are the Top 5 websites to practice coding?
Competitive programming opens doors for various scholarships, rewards, jobs & internships. Here, we have curated the Top 5 websites that provide the most essential coding exercises to practice coding through hands-on experience.
1. HackerRank
HackerRank is majorly a technical interview platform. This platform serves well for beginners so you can safely write your first program “Hello World” to get started. Its pretty good UI with boilerplate code pre-written will help beginners to start competitive coding.
About 8 different coding challenges hosted by HackerRank cover topics that include algorithms, Java, Ruby, Python, Data structures & algorithms. The practicing users can earn badges by solving challenges on the HackerRank website and these badges will be added to their profile. You need to note that this website’s contests come at a price of about $25/month for interview content & $819/month for team subscriptions.
One important drawback here is that HackerRank tends to set up exams that are erratic in nature. Users have to deal with inaccurate coding exercises and unstable connections during interviews.
2. LeetCode
LeetCode offers various weekly & biweekly programming challenges for the participants. You can start solving the challenges in their online editor, a.k.a “Playground” in any one of the supported 14 programming languages. Generally, these challenges are run for a duration of 90 minutes. LeetCode’s playground tools help you test, debug, and write code with ease.
A survey when done with its users showed results that Big tech companies are moving away from LeetCode-style questions: So, you can use this site to practice coding but may not really count on cracking the interview questions of tech companies of your dreams. LeetCode Premium subscription gives access to additional tools and premium content for a monthly subscription of $35. And, the annual fee will come to around $159.
3. GUVI
GUVI is the trending networking platform for programmers & IT enthusiasts. While it offers self-paced courses for its learners in a vernacular approach, GUVI also hosts various industry-oriented coding contests & challenges for aspirants who wish to grow up in the programming world. Its interactive programming practice platform ‘CodeKata’ has over 2000+ programming problem statements for its 17+ Lakh users to practice coding.
CodeKata categorizes its coding problems in terms of difficulty levels from easy to advanced, top companies’ most asked questions, & based on evergreen programming languages like Python, Java, JavaScript, etc. Also focuses on covering the core topics of computer science, data structures & algorithms. Various new creative coding challenges are conducted by GUVI, like, Hackathon, Code sprint, 48 hr-coding challenges, etc with high-bounty cash rewards & internship opportunities.
Alongside, a community of coders on the GUVI forum, ZEN career boot camps, and tech certification programs extend a chance for serious aspirants to Get placed in Top-tech companies through assured Job Placement Support.
The Best Feature of CodeKata of GUVI is that… It’s absolutely Free to Practice Coding!
4. CodeChef
Code Chef’s practice problems enable you to answer the coding problems in one of over 50 programming languages. You can filter the coding problems based on difficulty levels focusing on various topics like sorting, data structures-algorithms & dynamic programming. The usage of Codechef depends upon you & your career goals. If you are coding just to be an average coder or just to pass your examinations, then it is absolutely a waste of time. Nevertheless, This platform also offers self-guided learning opportunities and mentoring programs like GUVI. This website follows rating system for users to compete for hiring in top companies. You’ll need atleast 2000 ratings in CodeChef to proceed forward to apply for companies to hire you.
5. TopCoder
The TopCoder Community provides majorly 4 segments – Competitive Programming, Design, Development, & Data Science. One can build their skills, show their expertise in competitive programming, and earn money as they improve their coding abilities.
This platform sells the individual’s work to their corporate clients & pays off the individuals for their efficient & optimized code. TopCoder acts like a hub for corporate companies to hire tech talents/freelancers through coding challenges hosted by it.
Summary
Gaining coding skills requires a lot of patience. Begin participating in different competitive programming contests & get better day by day. The prerequisite would be to practice coding on the above mentioned websites. Check what suits you the best with affordability. Get Started with Free Coding on CodeKata. These competitive coding skills will highlight your resume and accelerate you to land a job in top tech companies.
