What Do You Guys Think of Codewars Codewars Review Reddit

Reading through some of the comments hither I feel like you but posted a video series of running over cats in your SUV to Reddit. Personally, I love it, I recall its swell, has a slick feel and experience to it. The site wasn't as responsive as you might hope but to be fair you are currently on the forepart page of HN so I am willing to let that slide. Looks like a ton of hard piece of work went into this and I think it comes across actually well!

I'd second that. Not bad site! Not agreement the reported concerns regarding OAuth, usability, etc. Works for me. Only problem I'thousand striking is 500 errors, which I assume is because the server is getting smashed. Good problem to have!

Really appreciate the balanced perspective. We're a very minor squad and we're constantly improving, then it'due south great to hear supportive feedback. And yea, nosotros've gotten crazy traffic, so the 500s/speed are load issues that nosotros only pushed a fix for.

Hi exolxe, I'm working on an open up-source framework for code challenge web apps, so I'm really happy to see such a website done right :-) ! Sent you a mail asking for some help, promise you'll find fourth dimension to answer. Good luck !

For the privacy-conscientious user, your site provides one of the worst experiences I've ever seen. To go annihilation to work, I had to allow scripts from www.codewars.com, push.codewars.com, two CloudFlare domains, AND platform.twitter.com. While my usual process to get JS-heavy web apps to work is load scripts from the domain itself, plus whatever standard CDN domains (like CloudFlare), your site does not piece of work without widgets.js from Twitter, which is pretty crazy. You depend on three dissimilar CloudFlare subdomains - one of which serves a tracking script, on top of you trying to load tracking scripts from MixPanel, Google Analytics, Rollbar, Intercom, Twitter and Facebook. I simply loaded what I had to, but I think it's safety to assume that yous would take pushed more domains on to me had I loaded everything. Edit: the complaints in the two paragraphs below are invalid (can't strikethrough on HN) - I mistook the hallmark form as requesting my GitHub credentials, whereas the "GitHub" title is a link to GitHub'due south oauth page, and they also provide the option for creating a CodeWars account without linking your GitHub. The visual distinction between these two hallmark mechanisms is near-invisible on my laptop's monitor. Anyway, according to guptaneil (below), they will withal crave yous to create an business relationship with them afterward linking your GitHub, so don't bother. -Normally I would just dismiss such a privacy-brassy site as yours, but what pushed me to make a annotate is that yous prompted me to type in my GitHub countersign on your site, on a grade with an action against your server. This is admittedly horrendous. You lot should only input your GitHub password on pages at, and send it to, servers at https://*.github.com. I can only experience distressing for all the users who have fallen for this. I feel worse for those users without NoScript, who have unknowingly typed their GitHub password into a tab with scripts from near 10 unlike companies running - do you trust all of them to not log your password? Fifty-fifty the analytics companies?- -I've flagged this post, and for anyone who typed their GitHub credentials into this site, I'd recommend you reset your password.-

Sorry for the confusion on the signup Majika. We aren't request for your Github credentials, simply are offer a link to connect your Github account securely via oauth and Github.com (it's optional). The fields for email/password are to set details for your new account on Codewars. If you accidentally entered your Github info at that place nosotros can manually delete the account for you. We do load quite a few 3rd party libraries, though only to make the user experience even better. All of these services are pretty standard and near of these should be familiar with many web developers. Intercom allows us to communicate in real-fourth dimension with our users, Rollbar allows usa to monitor client-side exceptions, mixpanel and google for analytics, twitter and facebook for social. Yous bring up a good point though that for users who wish to disable these, in that location are integration points within our code that would about likely crusade errors to be thrown. We can certainly work on decoupling our code so that it silently ignores calls to these APIs.

Thanks for the response. I'm very happy to hear that y'all consider the difficult-dependency on external scripts a trouble, and that you are willing to accommodate users who prefer to control who their browser talks to.

Maybe y'all should get full rms and only access the web via e-mail. I can't believe this is the elevation comment.

Stop setting upward this dichotomy. It's not all or nothing. There are reasonable amounts of external javascript to load, and there are unreasonable amounts. Please report the difference.

The UI on their site is extremely unclear and I initially made the same assumption, but they're non asking for your GitHub password. They are asking you to enter in a password for their site to create an account. I however have no idea why information technology was necessary to link my GitHub account though, since I had to create a new codewars account anyway.

Oops. Thanks for that. I've edited my post. Turns out they accept a imitation email accost, so I just signed upwardly with that.

Glad you lot were able to make the distinction, we are working on making Github's integration cleaner. The intention is to allow you to link your github account, and then that you tin can use it for return access to Codewars. It'due south also meant to auto-populate your username/email and not crave password - which we but realized is broken.

Was anyone else put off by the link github/enlist to continue later on but two brainteasers? I felt like I was just starting to become actually engaged in using the site and enjoying it, to just have a "paywall type obstacle" in the way and take away my good vibe feeling. Maybe rephrasing enlist to something like login to track your progress would be ameliorate?

Thanks for the feedback winslow - we didn't mean to dampen your vibe. The idea is as the challenges go harder we want to make sure you lot become ones you care well-nigh (interest surface area, difficulty) - that's a good idea on rephrasing it, we could make that more apparent and give more than challenges before requiring signup. Critique really helps us improve, we love hearing it, anybody should feel gratuitous to attain out: nathan@codewars.com

Well, they are programmers, I think they are more than than conscious most how we (others too, only especially programmers) feel about that! As well, we can always pest them back with auto response filters[i] :-) [one]: A Croatian (I'm Croatian, too) website made me submit my email for a Web purchase, just they started sending newsletters they have no unsubscribtion mechanism, and they send the newsletter from <newsletter id>-newsletter@..., which I could filter and send to spam (which I also exercise) , but instead, I forrard the e-mail back to them and as well send a reply that I'd like to stop receiving these emails. Ironically, they asked me on a few occasions to terminate emailing them, I simply reply with the aforementioned reply they sent me when I asked to exist unsubscribe: "It's automatic, at that place'due south zilch I can practice about it." In that location'due south always a manner to fuck with those who endeavor to fuck with you. :-)

Very sure... we promise we won't pester you. Nosotros send a weekly newsletter with challenges, but you can opt-out if it doesn't involvement you.

Of course, I know you lot didn't hateful to dampen the vibe. I really dearest the site and the love idea as it got my brain thinking which is why I was really bummed to see a forced login. Obviously y'all want to track progress, difficulty, and customize per user which is understandable and smart. I could exist an outlier to the enlist statement/requirement so delight grab other information points on this bailiwick ;) Keep upward the good piece of work on it!

Thanks Winslow - glad to hear you lot love the site! We want to make sure to go along the intrigue and flow going. So nosotros're seriously thinking about how we can open more challenges while balancing it with a customized experience, great advice. Appreciate the help.

A fleck more than feedback: In chrome 32.0.1700.77, clicking join did zip, it simply scrolled to the top of the folio. Also, I'd honey to see a quick video introduction. I like the concept.

Same here. Some points: - Navigation feels weird. - The main phone call to action should exist "Try Codewars" instead of "Join Codewars" so it'd experience like "no compromise just effort it", as well information technology'd be clearer that y'all tin can really try it out before signing upwards. I agree that the teaser should exist longer than the 2 modest exercises. - The webcam in the monitor kinda creeps me out and draws my attention away from the of import stuff.

Skillful signal on the text - we'll make an update... The landing page navigation? The webcam comment had me laughing for a few minutes. Never really noticed, only it'south an like shooting fish in a barrel fix.

Yep the landing page navigation, I actually didn't notice there was more to information technology than the landing folio. I felt kinda lost in the landing page cause at that place's no much else than the "Join us" thing. I'm a programmer, my optics have been trained to ignore marketing copy and search for code examples and documentation.

Thank you - glad you lot similar the concept. A video intro is a absurd idea, we'll look into it. The join push button just isn't clear enough, when it scrolls up it's just taking you to the challenges on the monitor, since y'all signup through there.

Thanks, a couple people here too seem confused by the join push, perhaps take information technology to a sign-up class, or alter the join button text to be a little more descriptive of what you want the user to accomplish.

That's unfortunate - just shoot me an email and nosotros'll claw you up: nathan@codewars.com

I just finished the Javascript and JQuery course at codecademy.com three weeks ago and since then I take challenges at coderbyte.com to continue learning. And then I was very interested in your site and signed up. Here are some of my first observations and comparisons: - codecademy.com lists lots of males and females from young to one-time, from unlike countries with all kind of professions on their Success Stories pages. I felt very welcome their site. The name of your site and the constant utilize of the discussion Kata bespeak to me that your audience are young males. Every bit a woman in my thirties I don't experience I fit on your site. It seems a bit to aggressive to me. - The 2d Javascript problem description was non very good. The 2nd problem basically says "Something is incorrect - correct it". I like clearer instructions similar "write a function to reverse a cord". - Compared to codecademy.com the site took longer to check my lawmaking. - I have no problem giving my electronic mail address to anybody that provides a service I want to try. I like to get the onboarding mails from codecademy.com and think they should transport out more because they are motivating. So I think that information technology is good that yous are asking for my e-postal service accost and I promise you make good use of it by sending me interesting stuff. If non, I just filter you with a click. I'one thousand going to spend some fourth dimension on your site. If you want further feedback, only send me a message.

Just curious, why does the give-and-take kata turn you off because y'all are female? As someone who has studied martial arts for five years, in that location accept been plenty of female students and the vast majority of the people I study with are well into their 30s.

I don't think the give-and-take "kata" by itself is masculine or aggressive but the site is called codeWARs, and they call signing upwardly "enlisting" so ..

Seriously? You lot never noticed that the martial arts world is male dominated in a way that many women notice off-putting? Sure, some women are okay with it, but that doesn't mean all women are (or should be).

Cheers for the feedback Sandrae, it's helpful to hear your perspective. We have a lot of female users on Codewars and want to make certain everyone feels welcome. The term "Kata" are what we call our challenges, it just ways "form" in Japanese - information technology's used in calligraphy and martial arts to draw a way to do a pattern to excellence. As for our name, it does hint at competition, though is meant as a metaphorical war on mediocrity and the status quo. Performance-wise our site isn't going to exist as fast since we run the lawmaking on our ain servers (opposed to in your browser), which has lot's of advantages for better challenges/more versatility, but makes speed a fiddling more than of an issue. I hope you practice give the site a shot, and if you lot have any more feedback delight email me: nathan@codewars.com

Yeah, the give-and-take "war" hints at competition merely it literally ways violent conflict. I know of no clan between "war" and a metaphor for self improvement. You should make that clearer if that is what you lot're going for. However, with "war", "kata" and "enlist" it seems pretty obvious you were going for a martial arts/warrior theme. It'south kind of patronising to pretend that theme isn't at that place just because someone doesn't similar it.

I'd similar to know this as well. I know many female person karate practitioners and not a single one ever proposed changing the traditional Japanese classification because she didn't experience "welcome" or felt "excluded" or fifty-fifty "offended" by it. Here's the official explanation of what the word ways: Kata (型 or 形 literally: "form") is a Japanese give-and-take describing detailed choreographed patterns of movements practised either solo or in pairs.

The site is called CodeWars, non CodeDances or CodeCaligraphy. Kata here is clearly associated with martial arts. Martial arts and war tend to exist popular with men and less popular with women. Is that really a contentious signal? Do y'all desire a marketplace survey to back that up? Or take you actually been to a karate class and opened your optics? I trained kung fu for six years and accept gone to taster sessions and occasional classes in karate, savate, jui jitsu, escrima, tai chi and aikido. Martial arts is more popular with men than with women. Everyone knows this except you, apparently. Also, you put "welcome", "excluded" and "offended" in quotation marks. Sandrae did non say any of those words. Whoever you were quoting isn't really relevant to this word.

I think it'due south because we associate kata specifically with _martial_ arts in Western usage. The significant takes on a militant tone when that context is the starting point.

I speak Japanese and 形 is just a normal word to me. I don't come across information technology as militant at all. In fact, I find it offensive that someone is and so culturally self-centered and solipsistic as to demand changes to language using a perfectly neutral word simply because they can't see past cultural/linguistic communication differences. I guarantee you that if you brought upwards this issue with a Japanese person (from Japan), they'd have no idea what y'all're talking well-nigh - literally. Stop demanding the whole world adjusts to you and your solipsistic ways and try to exist more tolerant of cultural differences and multifariousness. If I was the creator of the website, I'd probably have told the OP to fuck off because I don't desire shit-stirrers and culturally insensitive people on my website.

Well, but you lot are at present maxim, "ignore the past 60-odd years of appropriation of the civilisation, and buy into this new cribbing! Information technology's all different! We're marketing authenticity now!" This site's theme uses the gravity of the old "Oriental mystique" trope to seem a little more than impressive - to make programming practise sound "exotic" or "badass". What the fuck does a ukiyo-east epitome take to do with programming? No Japanese site would choose this theme, in the aforementioned way that you have observed that no Japanese person would think of 形 as a militant word. The Western equivalent would exist to plaster a Dutch Gilt Age painting onto the background and substitute Dutch words similar "drillen" and "uitoefening" for "kata". It would exist ridiculous and nobody would take information technology seriously. The problem is, we already accept fine English words for what is being done: "exercise" and "practise". "kata" remains associated with McDojos that want to impress y'all - it's not a borrowed give-and-take that has entered everyday utilize. And we've grown into accepting that it exists in that context over time. But its usage can still be considered not just offensive merely colonial, in any Western context. It's an outright theft of culture.

Kata is a choreography of martial arts movements. Often these movements involve an aggressor or a theoretical attacker. Also, after all the site is called Code Wars, perhaps she was influenced by that too.

Do y'all think that Kata denotes "site full of young males" because you typically simply hear males maxim it? It's meaning is gender neutral. I'll admit that until signing upwards for a martial arts form which had women in information technology, I'd only heard men apply the word Kata. How could they make the site less aggressive?

I can't recommend Codewars highly enough as a way to acuminate your skills. It'southward like a slightly more verbose, prettier Projection Euler. They currently support CoffeeScript, Javascript, and Blood-red, but are working on supporting a ton more. Definitely worth investigating.

No! You may non accept my email accost after 2 woefully unproblematic problems! I don't demand you sending me emails every twenty-four hours, "You forgot to come to Codewars.com in the concluding ii hours, why aren't you lot spending your entire life on this site?!"

It'due south all good - we may open information technology beyond members eventually. The main reason for e-mail correct at present is to foster a quality community... Just and so you know we have strict no-emails-every-2-hours policy.

Cool idea. The Crimson code takes a long time to evaluate - fifty-fifty though I passed the commencement two challenges without any issues, this would frustrate me if I were a beginner. Why not use a Ruby REPL? Looks like you're evaluating the lawmaking server side.

Thanks and proficient catch. Nosotros practise execute the code submissions on our own servers, partially and then that nosotros can prevent cheating and make sure all solutions are legit (the solutions list users see later on finishing each challenge provides some of the site's greatest value)... though second is because we plan to eventually support total environments (challenges that apply libraries, frameworks, etc.). The speed issue is optimization on our part, nosotros boosted the servers so information technology should be a lot quicker now

You could make a start evaluation on the client then that the user gets quick feedback whether his solution is correct. To validate that the user didn't crook, you tin can make a 2nd evaluation (server sided). The user shouldn't be forced to wait for the server sided evaluation. Instead he should exist able to solve the next task immediately. But nevertheless: Great idea with a lot of potential! Maybe you can give more detailed compile errors, if the user wrote incorrect lawmaking.

If you practice implement this, you can besides avoid validating every submission server-side. It should be plenty to check a random sample. If you suspect someone, y'all tin can start checking them more aggressively. If yous want to get serious, in that location's really a lot of research into adulterous prevention :)

Same bargain with JavaScript - at that place is a significant lag between when I striking submit and see if the submission was right. It seems like it would exist niggling to become JS to run in the browser, but mayhap I'm overlooking some caveat to eval that the creators foresaw.

Saw y'all guys demo at a meet-upwards at Carbon5 almost a year ago, absurd to see your progress since then. I actually apply the site regularly, nice work, peculiarly with the mode your hide the spoilers so you lot can't only cheat if y'all go stuck.

I love it! I'm a self-taught programmer, mostly working lone on my own projects. This is a neat style to expand my knowledge and have fun at the aforementioned fourth dimension. I particularly like seeing the other solutions afterward I've come up with my own. Thanks!

This is a very fun way to learn and get ameliorate. It's still in a very active evolution stage, so things go upwardly-and-down regularly (which sucks when you want to go your fix), but information technology's more often than not been crawly while I've used it the last few months or then. If you lot do try information technology out, one of the best parts is adding your ain "kata" — basically the games or tests. You will larn a lot by writing them (the community is very active in helping users improve description text and test cases). And there'southward null similar seeing someone come up in and absolutely smash your best effort out of the water with something fifty-fifty more astonishing.

The site looks cracking! I only have 1 comment: it'd exist nice to get an idea of which solution is the about efficient, and information technology'd be Actually nice to be able to sort solutions by speed.

The dashboard UI is pretty confusing, I switched to Chrome considering I thought it was cleaved in Firefox, and in Chrome the "preview" (at present I know it is a preview) has shadow on the bottom. Information technology wasn't at all clear to me that clicking 'Train' would start the practise with that preview. Otherwise, massive kudos, I hope you upgrade to CodeMirror iv with multiple cursors and improve the CoffeeScript highlighting (I really feel Ace is more ready for what you're doing). All the best!

"The reason Google seemed a bad idea was that there were already lots of search engines and there didn't seem to exist room for some other." - Paul Graham "It already exists" is a terrible reason not to do something

The difference is that Google had a clear unique value proffer that was to provide search results (and only search results) back extremely quickly and were highly relevant when they other players were focused on creating "spider web portals" and did not focus attention on search. With CodeCombat and Codeacademy there UVP is very obvious (make learning to code a game and teach to code online resp.) and had not previously been done. With this site I don't understand what the UVP is (social programming challenges?) that hasn't been already past something like TopCoder, Sphere Online Judge, etc.

"Achieve mastery through challenge" is the tagline. The thought here is to push yourself to solve problems y'all may have not attempted earlier, and to larn from others past seeing how they solved theirs. I've have personally learned a lot from seeing how other people solve problems, I fifty-fifty learned a lot from creative uses of solving "Hello World" which was a bit of a surprise. In brusk: Codecademy is meant for those who want to acquire programming. Codewars is for existing programmers who desire to become improve at programming.

Glad to hear it, it'southward in the works - we're just deciding the order to launch them, so the voting feedback on next languages really helps us

I'd also like to run across Clojure or ClojureScript support. It would bring me dorsum a lot more often.

I was pretty taken past this site, I did the teasers, signed upward, selected my skills and interests but then when I wanted to continue I started getting 500 errors. I had to get out quick so I didn't try to find a fashion effectually but I would have had some fun if information technology wasn't because of that. Haven't managed to actually use the site.

Nosotros got hit with pretty heavy traffic, the load was causing the 500s and we've pushed a ready for information technology - it's ready to become, then come back and check it out!

Dandy idea -- interested to hear more virtually how y'all're handing all the syntaxes, a combination of JVM and other things?

Couple of bits of feedback - Server was unreachable when I tried to submit an answer, and the submit push was then permanently disabled - Not sure if my sign-in with Github was successful, information technology only shows login notwithstanding - Now getting 'The code does not execute properly. Endeavour to figure out why.' and there is no code in the box to enter

This is actually cool-- but I get so many "Submission timed out" errors that I tin't even do a problem...

Simply wondering nigh how y'all are doing or going to do your sandboxing for languages similar c, c++, etc. If you are running capricious code from the user on the server, it could exist risky I would imagine, and so I am wondering what steps y'all take to brand sure the user won't do annihilation nasty?

I would be pretty interested in this every bit well. I imagine that they only have a loose idea at this point, if at all. If the listing of "coming soon languages" is any indication of priority, c and c++ are at the lesser of the pack.

Great questions guys - we use locked-down language sandboxes on our own servers correct now (github.com/codewars) for JS and Reddish. And so we're developing a Docker/LXC based server sandbox that will allow us to safely run each lawmaking submission in any language in its ain container... Some other OSS option out there is: http://eval.so/

+one - This one caught me off guard for a 2nd. You have to complete the two challenges on the home folio before it'll allow you sign upward.

The sign in we have in that location is simply for current users. To sign up just take the challenges on the homepage - Skilful luck!

I run into. It was very confusing to click "Sign In" then click "Don't have an account? Enlist Now." and be redirected to the home page. Looks absurd though, thanks. Edit: I now see the intended catamenia, simply there was no indication that I had to consummate the starting time 2 levels to be able to sign up.

That test doesn't pass for me in Chrome console. I recall it's considering your isNaN bank check shortcircuits the other checks as yous're checking if the array element is NaN. Is that what you meant to do? Also when you recursively phone call `numbers(args)` your `[].slice` volition put your array inside another array.

FYI none of the buttons seem to be working on the homepage in Firefox OS X. On Safari the formatting on the homepage is all off. Pretty absurd nonetheless, I plan on trying this out more later today!

Sorry to hear that - we've done testing on Firefox/Safari and haven't gotten that, though definitely desire to fix it upwardly... Good luck getting into it after, and if you could aid us debug just shoot me an email nathan@codewars.com. Thanks!

I like the concept, but I don't run into how I can currently compete with other coders on these problems. If I could pair upwards with a friend and do these challenges I would enjoy it more.

I voted for Haskell to be included and program on joining when it'south added :) Edit: Though, it'southward not beyond the realm of possibility I'll requite in and sign-up once there is python back up.

This is awesome! You should seriously add together PHP. Our community is probably the largest and has many inexperienced programmers who would really benefit from Codewars.

Is there a way to go back to Katas that I've started working on, but haven't completed? (Or is that something I shouldn't exist doing?)

Correct now we save all your progress on the kata, though you need to observe it over again past searching/listing view... We're pushing a "favorites" list soon that will allow you lot to earmark them for later.

I didn't look much but ended up pretty impressed by the site. It's beautifully designed and the menses is very natural. Lots of kudos!

Is the scoring only based on fourth dimension-taken and LOC? The top script that I looked at was more than like code-golf. Is that the aim?

The scoring is based on upvotes from other users. This ofttimes does translate to the "top answers" being dubious 1-liners.

To start upvotes from the community was the all-time way to do it - though before long plenty we'll be benchmarking solutions so y'all can order them by execution time.

It's our adjacent ane - nosotros're getting close to launching information technology, if you driblet your electronic mail in the voting, we'll make sure to let you know!

We'll make that more than clear - right now the Github Sign In is for current members, the signup is later the two challenges on the homepage

However, did not work when pressing Sign In and going through that process. I came dorsum to homepage with no difference.

Information technology only worked once I went through the few questions on the homepage, and and then it was a unmarried click to connect my GitHub account. Finally, logged in now.

Outstanding user experience throughout the account setup, I will keep playing with this as information technology's quite enjoyable so far. Thanks for sharing. #edit it'south kind of lamentable (and telling) to run into the complexity and cleverness in the higher ranked solutions. #edit2 rampant regex solutions, nested returns, oh my.

Yea right now information technology'south non a total github sign-in, merely allows united states of america to let yous auto-signin when y'all render. Nosotros still need to other info to create the account.

bryantalippon.blogspot.com

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7186459

Share this post