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Fantastic Beasts, oops, Bits, anyone? The theme for the next competition by the folks at codingame is inspired by the Harry Potter world.
Code the real-world Skynet or not. But it is still super awesome to see your code making a bot look intelligent. Not only that, but you get to battle other programmers while honing your skills.
Still not convinced. Let's tackle those pesky excuses of yours for not participating.
I don't know anything about artificial intelligence
It's just code. You will be surprised at how far simple logic will take you in these contests.
Don't get me wrong, the complexity increases as you crush the league bosses, but the first few leagues are quite easy to beat. If you don't believe me, check out my postmortem of the Accountant and the Hypersonic contest.
You might also learn about other AI techniques that other players are using. And, some might just be intriguing enough that you would want to explore them further.
Since codingame generally opens up the contest as a bot puzzle after the competition, you can continually refine your techniques there and prepare for the next competition.
I don't have the time
Great. Neither do I or most of the people that participate. You just levelled the playing field for a few of us. But, on a serious note, you should still participate.
First of all, the goal is to have fun. If you win, well, that's just a bonus. If nothing else, you will be trying to solve a fun problem, which you can forget about in 1 week.
In the worst case, you will still learn something and adapt for the next time. It is surprising what solutions you can come up with when you are pressed for time and trying to beat the boss of a specific league.
But, I am not good enough
The goal is to have fun and learn something along the way. You might not win, but then again, most of the other people won't. You will still have the satisfaction of battling against other players and beating some of them. Also, as far as I have seen, the community is very helpful even when you get stuck, even in the higher leagues.
Register at the codingame website. The competition starts on November 27th and will last for 8 days. Feel free to follow me at codingame using this url.