Language Learning Challenges

Gamified Way to Drive Your Coding Skills

These challenges are designed to be researched and coded in order to incrementally learn new concepts and skills for any language. The challenges require completing several combined tasks which you will need to research and learn for your target language. You can do them all in one language at a time or learn several languages at the same time. (Mr. Rob recommends Bash, Go, C, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Ruby, and Rust.)

Note that all of these challenges assume you will be doing them from a Linux command line so you will first need to become proficient with Bash and a terminal editor such as the recommended Vim. This is by design. If you can learn to edit, compile, and run code from the command line you can do it anywhere else, but the reverse is simply not true. Since most coding these days involves Linux and the command line you will be ahead of everyone else who doesn’t learn it that way. It’s a simple fact.

• Hello World
  Create program that prints Hello World! when run from the command line or console locally.
  [SheBang, Standard Output, Printing, Strings]

• Hey There
  Create a program that prints Hey there by default or Hey there You if You is passed as an argument and Hey there You over there if 'You over there' is passed as the first argument (hint quotes).
  [Variables, Parameters, Arguments, Formatted Printing]

• Hi You
  Create a program named hi that prints Hi there by default but prints Hi <arg> if there is a command line argument. If a one of two special names (like Linux and Rob) are passed then instead of the default the script should print something special like Woah <arg>, you rock! If a specific insult name (like Dork) is used the script should print Um, no need to be rude.
  [Algorithms, Condition Statements, Boolean Logic and Operators]

• Nyan Cat
  Write a command-line program that loops forever printing the word Nyan (or something).
  [Looping, Signals, Interrupts, Control-C, Printing to Same Line]

• RGB Command
  Create a command that takes three arguments for red, green, and blue that are numbers between 0 and 255. Combine the numbers into a vt100 (ANSI) RGB color escape and print the escape sequence invisibly coloring anything printed after. Test by printing different things in different colors. Once that works go back and assign random default color values for each if less than three arguments are passed.
  [VT100 ANSI Escape Characters, Terminal RGB Color Escapes, Variables, Quoting Backslash Escape Characters, Random Number Generation]

• Greetings
  Create a command line program that when run greets the user and prompts them to enter their name. Then read the name and print a nice personalized greeting using it. If the name is not entered or contains only whitespace then print a message about not understanding and prompt again for a good name. Repeat the message and prompt forever until a good name is entered.

• Now
  Create a program called now that prints a specific human-friendly time stamp suitable for including in an article or a blog (Monday, June 29, 2020, 8:28:26PM). Create another program called hnow that calls the first program and adds a default Markdown header prefix ##. Have hnow accept one argument and use that instead of the default if set. Demonstrate using hnow from vi by combining it with !! correctly.

• Comment Out
  Create a program called cmt that reads in every line of input and adds a comment prefix to each line and outputs the newly prefixed line. Once that’s complete have the program check for arguments and use them as the prefix instead.

• Do You Like Waffles?
  Write a command-line program that simulates the now ancient video Do You Like Waffles prompting the user with questions and checking their responses. If yes then ask the next question. If no then print something snarky and end the program. If nothing is entered (or just empty spaces) then ask the same question again.