CODE KATASTHE ZEN OF CODING

by / Paul Gower @paulmgower

ABOUT ME

Computer Science Degree

Alltel Client/Server University -

Developing Enterprise Software for over 12 years

Worked at Big, Small, and now a Consulting Company

Dr. Dobbs Article

OVERVIEWWhat is a Code Kata?

Why Code Kata?

How to get involved in the community.

Let's Code Kata!

WHAT IS A CODE KATA?

( wikipedia)

Code Kata is a term coined by DaveThomas, co-author of the book The

Pragmatic Programmer, in a bow to theJapanese concept of kata in the martial

arts. A code kata is an exercise inprogramming which helps a programmer

hone their skills through practice andrepetition.

Kata (programming)

WHY CODE KATA?

( Steve Yegge blog)

Contrary to what you might believe, merelydoing your job every day doesn't qualify as

real practice.

practicing programming

( Scientific American article)

Ericsson argues that what matters is notexperience per se but "effortful study,"

which entails continually tacklingchallenges that lie just beyond one's

competence.

The Expert Mind

EFFORTFUL STUDY

( Jeff Atwood blog)

...tackling problems at the very edge ofyour ability. Stuff you may have a high

probability of failing at.

The Ultimate Code Kata

CENTRAL ARKANSASCODE KATA

HTTP://CODEKATA.CO

MULTIPLE PHASES

PHASE 1

SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2013

Bi-weekly Code Kata posted on Sunday afternoon to the website

Post your answer following the instructions that will belisted in the post.

codekata.co

PHASE 2

IN THE FUTURE

Community will rank the best solution

Sponsorship to give the highest voted answer a prize

A regular meetup to Pair-Program Code Katas

LET'S CODE KATASTRING REVERSEImagine a time when you didn't have a framework method that would take a string as input and return the reverseof it.

TASK

Create a method that takes a string as an input and returns the reverse of the string. Use whatever programminglanguage you prefer to solve this problem.

INPUT

Use the following items as example inputs:

"Hello World"

"Here we go."

"Code Kata is fun!"

OUTPUT

These are the outputs you should expect from the above inputs:

"dlroW olleH"

".og ew ereH"

"!nuf si ataK edoC"

FIZZBUZZFizzBuzz is an old school kata that has been floating around the internet for a while. If you have solved thisproblem before then we encourage you to use a different language.

TASK

Your task is to write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Fizz" insteadof the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and fiveprint "FizzBuzz". Use whatever programming language you prefer to solve this problem.

INPUT

None.

OUTPUT

Output either i, "Fizz", "Buzz" or "FizzBuzz" depending on if the i is divisible by three or five.

REFERENCE

Thanks to for this .Jeff Atwood's blog Kata

REVERSED BINARY NUMBERSYi has moved to Sweden and now goes to school here. The first years of schooling she got in China, and thecurricula do not match completely in the two countries. Yi likes mathematics, but now... The teacher explains thealgorithm for subtraction on the board, and Yi is bored. Maybe it is possible to perform the same calculations onthe numbers corresponding to the reversed binary representations of the numbers on the board? Yi dreams awayand starts constructing a program that reverses the binary representation, in her mind. As soon as the lectureends, she will go home and write it on her computer.

TASK

Your task will be to write a program for reversing numbers in binary. For instance, the binary representation of 13is 1101, and reversing it gives 1011, which corresponds to number 11. Use whatever programming language youprefer to solve this problem.

INPUT

The input contains a single line with an integer N, 1 ≤ N ≤ 1000000000.

OUTPUT

Output one line with one integer, the number we get by reversing the binary representation of N.

REFERENCE

Thanks to for this . They have some great puzzles on their site and I'm sure we'll use someof them as we continue to code kata.

spotify's job site Kata

RESOURCES - our new website to do code katas! (Big thanks goes

to for setting this up!)

- a good website with information about CodeKatas (older but still informative)

by

by

by

- Steve McConnell's website is a greatresources to learn more about how to be a better software developer.

http://codekata.co@_davidhudson

http://www.codekata.com

The Ultimate Code KataJeff Atwood

Practicing ProgrammingSteve Yegge

Given I like reading Source Code by the fire with my smoking jacket andbrandy snifer, a list of books

Scott Hanselman

http://www.stevemcconnell.com

THE ENDPaul Gower

@paulmgowerpaul.gower@gmail.com

http://paulgower.me