In order to help those participants interested in developing their programming skills in Python and offer an opportunity for participants to learn general programming skills, we propose a coding competition. Participants are expected to answer Python questions in this Github repository (in the questions directory and named questions.txt).
There are a set of questions in Python separated into 2 parts - General Python and Pandas Questions. Complete as many questions as possible and submit by 05/12/2020. Submit results by writing up your answers in a .py file, host the file on a GitHub repository on your own GitHub page (if you don't have one, make one!) and invite Junaid and Yusra as collaborators to the repository. It is also acceptable to direct message us on Slack to inform us that you have submitted your answers with the link to your repository.
Please include comments in your code to specify which question you are answering and provide code commentary so we are aware of what you're trying to do. Moreover, please follow common Python formatting conventions to ensure your code is readable and clear for humans - we may give marks for this. You may include additional comments explaining your thought process and intention.
Unless specified otherwise, it is permitted to import libraries and go outside base Python to answer these questions, you do not have to write long elaborate functions yourself if someone on the internet has done it for you, but provide accompanying comments if you are copying and pasting (we can't check that you copied and pasted but we can figure it out if we see long blocks of code that isn't consistent with your style in the other answers - didn't think you could get off that easy did you?).
Using Google and asking for help from coaches and each other is allowed although we request you try to work as indepedently as possible. You will not be penalised for asking for hints but you will be penalised if you inquire such that the answer becomes obvious.
We will grade you on criteria such as:
- Does your code give the correct answer to the question?
- Compactness of code, did you achieve the correct answer succinctly? You'll be rewarded for using lambda functions and list comprehensions where appropriate.
- Degree of automation: it is possible to manually do calculations outside of Python and write your answers as hard coded lists/ dictionaries. This defeats the purpose of programming and such practices will be penalised unless deployed sparingly.
For those who perform well on this competition, you will be awarded programming courses from the excellent Learn Enough website so you can continue your journey into programming.
- First Place - All access to all courses on the website.
- Second place - Access to one of the bundles on the website (you have 3 bundles to select from)
- Third Place - Access to just one course from the website (your choice)
Ties will be dealt with by a fight to the death by answering some to be determined tiebreaker Python questions.
Most important thing is to have fun! Please let us know via Slack if you have any questions.