Interesting programming problems

[Aziza]

I am taking a course on Java and i am looking for some interesting general programming problems i could solve with java. I've gone through two java books, but most of the exercises at the ends of the chapters are very straightforward, and I am looking for something more challenging. My professor always asks much more challenging questions in class and asks us to think of an algorithm to solve his problem and even though I've done all of the textbook exercises, i find it hard to think of efficient algorithms on the spot to these harder problems, so i would like some practice with that. does anyone know any good books or websites with collections of such problems and maybe also with descriptions of the algorithms that are usually used to solve them?

 

[jhae2.718]

http://projecteuler.net

 

[Bill Simpson]

"Data Structures and Problem Solving Using Java" by Weiss is probably meant as a second year text and has what might be some more challenging exercises.

One of those is a simple calculator. Perhaps you could extend that to make it an arbitrary precision calculator and incorporate some of the functions like greatest common denominator, least common multiple, Euler phi function, etc, the sort of functions that people experimenting with numbers and number theory might really like to have in a calculator. And you could make it an applet so it would download automatically and run using your computer's resources.

If you did a good job of coding that so it would be easy for others to understand and add more functions then this might be a resource that people who are interested in that sort of calculation would really value.

You can download code from the author's website, but since you are learning I would suggest that you perhaps not just use his code, but learn how to do it yourself.

The newest editions of the book are as expensive as any textbook, but the old edition I have can now be purchased for $4 delivered!
http://www.bestwebbuys.com/Data-Str...g-Using-Java-ISBN-9780201549911?isrc=b-search

Once you get it working you might ask people over in the math/number theory area if people would try it out and suggest more functions to put into it.

 

[Aziza]

http://projecteuler.net

thank you!

 

[Adyssa]

Also have a look at TopCoder, there's some good tutorials there and some tough things to work on.

There's a nice list of project ideas here too:

http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/239201-project-ideas/