I've been doing a lot of Python programming as I try to shift from using Mathematica as my daily programming environment to making more use of Jupyter Notebooks and Python. Modern day programming is not like the old days (I started programming in the late 70's) were you sat down and pretty much wrote an entire program from scratch using paper reference guides for the language and the hardware. These days programming is largely about finding, modifying and pasting together various packages and code snippets found on the web. I must have done quite a lot of such searches for Python code, because at one point my browser window got this strange 3d effect as if the window rotated back and I was asked if I wanted a challenge. When I said yes, I saw this:
I believe that this is one of Google's recruiting tools. With my position as a Professor, I highly doubt it is intended for people like me, but after a busy week or so, I decided to try the first challenge tonight. Using the modern method of programming (searching the web for parts of solutions) it took me only a few minutes to find a very efficient snippet of code that I could adapt to the first challenge. I spent much more time understanding how the code snippet worked, because even though I could have just used it, I much prefer understanding. My first attempt to verify my solution showed that I missed a few tests, but with one small change I was able to complete the challenge.
Now I see this:
Overall, it was fun and a good way to learn more Python. If you happen to trigger this, have fun solving the puzzles.
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