I’m incredibly proud and happy about everything the CodinGame platform has enabled for its community members. More than diploma and credentials, motivation and curiosity can work wonders. Today, I’m sharing with you extracts from CodinGamer testimonies that I hope you’ll find inspiring. New year, new opportunities, new life!️ A Knack for Solving Things Whether you joined the programming world as a child or when you were older, you’ve probably always enjoyed building things. When solving problems becomes a game, coding is just the next step. “As a teenager, I spent a lot of time coding in GFA Basic on my parents’ Atari ST: games, a fractal generator, a genealogical program…I created sites and wrote Perl scripts for an association and learned C, C++, PHP along different personal projects. In short, before starting working with other developers, I had already coded for many years.” Loujo “I discovered programming in a summer camp in 1984…While others were playing with Thomson TO7 , I was tweaking BASIC programs to understand how they worked. Programming has always been a game for me.” McKelian “I started coding by making bots for games, and then I created a Minecraft server (site, shop…)” SeebOmega Always Learning , right? Well, you don’t have to take certified courses or validate a diploma every year. A thing as simple as exploring new concepts/languages out of curiosity is already a good step towards keeping up to date. True Programmers Never Stop Learning “Today, I’m level 22 on CG. I’ve learned new algorithms (Monte Carlo, AG, backtracking…), a new language(C++), and improved my coding a lot! The achievements and overall gamification motivate me to always go further.” SeebOmega “Thanks to CodinGame, I’ve made progress on several notions that I don’t come across at work. Puzzles require that you understand famous algorithms (A*, BFS, minimax…), and a lot of coding games demand performances, so it pushed me to learn C++. In short, I think CodinGame made me code faster and more efficiently.” Magus “I remember that my ego took serious blows when I checked solutions of other CodinGamers to puzzles I had just done: their coding was much more efficient and compact than mine. That’s actually how I discovered dynamic programming. If I want to fiddle with a new programming language, I try to solve a few puzzles first. I did it for Ocaml and Lua.” Loujo Not many top players were very good developers when they started here. Getting better at coding requires practice, effort and time. There’s no magic. “Thanks to CG, I’ve made progress on the readability of my code. I’ve also learned how to optimize my code for tasks and discovered new languages. The strategies shared by the top players on the forum and the blog were just new opportunities for me to practice my skills and do better.” McKelian Sharing Is Caring You thank us for the great platform, but you should thank yourselves, too. The platform is great mainly because of its community. When I look at all the things (puzzles, games, articles, tools…) that the community created, I get dizzy. “I’ve had the chance to meet interesting developers such as Loujo, thanks to CG and people from the CG team as well. I visited Parrot’s R&D team during Games of Drones. I got to play a drone race with Tomer Sisley! I was even able to visit the Winamax office in Paris during the Poker Chip Race contest. I still have goodies from this day on my desk.” McKelian “When you released the first AI contest (that was Tron), I loved it right from the start. It lasted for 2 months; it was long and absorbing, but I keep fond memories of the event and of the people who participated.” Loujo “The community, the thinking, the strategy sharing…amazing. I’ve learned a lot on a lot of subjects. There are tons of smart and nice people in the community, always keen to help. I myself have organized myself 3 CodingHubs in my previous company.” SeebOmega If you have no idea what a CodingHub is, just read this: . CodingHubs: Enjoy Coding for Fun with Other Developers Job Opportunities Coding for fun can open great work opportunities. I’m living proof of that, since I was recruited here following the Coders Strikes Back contest. I’m really happy that I dared contact CG despite my average performance in the challenge. Stories below are even more encouraging. “In 2014, I participated for fun in the Games of Drones contest. I wasn’t even aware that Parrot, the sponsor, was looking to hire developers. I seized the opportunity, and they finally recruited me as software engineer. It was a radical change for me, since I used to be a music teacher.” Loujo “I participated in the contest organized by Amadeus last year. They contacted me after; everything went so fast. I already had a job, but this was a great opportunity. I don’t know if Amadeus will be my dream company (I haven’t started yet), but without my CG profile, I wouldn’t have been hired there. It showed them I enjoy coding.” SeebOmega “I’ve found a new job, not specifically through CodinGame. However, the job opening required C++, for which I have no professional experience. Well, CodinGame gave me that experience. It gave me a lot of confidence regarding my skills and helped me a lot during interviews.” Magus “I was looking for a career change because I was getting bored at work. And I found out about CG. It was during the Doctor Who contest. I tried it out of curiosity…and I loved it! Finished 600 out of 1200 participants. I felt like I had wings on my heels. I was capable of something; I wasn’t that bad. So I practiced, solving lots of puzzles and playing multiplayer games. Eventually, I ranked 20th at the Ragnarok contest. Bingo! The day after, I started looking for a developer job. My CodinGame experience made me stand out from the crowd. I finally joined Eveler, my current employer, thanks to the Vox Codei competition.” McKelian I know there are scores of stories like these. Don’t hesitate to share yours in the comments or by email. Thank you all for making the community what it is, and special kudos to Loujo, Magus, McKelian and SeebOmega for their testimonies. Originally published at www.codingame.com on January 14, 2019.

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