Beat This Level, Get A Programming Job

Since there&#x27;s just a single instance, you can find the optimal solution manually and write a 29-line program that specifies the 29 rectangles in the optimal solution.<p>The general version of this problem can be termed &quot;the minimum dissection of a rectilinear region&quot; and can be solved optimally using a sweep-line and computing the maximal independent set in a bipartite graph as described in section 7.1 of [1].<p>Now if you&#x27;ll excuse me, I&#x27;m gonna have some fun implementing this result in JavaScript.<p>[1] Hiroshi Imai, Takao Asano: Efficient algorithms for geometric graph search problems (1986) <a href="https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=14098" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dl.acm.org&#x2F;citation.cfm?id=14098</a> <a href="http://epubs.siam.org/doi/pdf/10.1137/0215033" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;epubs.siam.org&#x2F;doi&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;10.1137&#x2F;0215033</a>

CodeCombat is just acting like a recruiter here. Do they have any advantage over traditional recruiters that may be more highly connected?<p>Beat this level, and we&#x27;ll send your resume to some companies that are hiring. And those companies will pay us a hefty commission.

Only the very darkest realm would deprive its wizards of the mighty printf spell! To what Silicon demon legion did you pledge fealty to summon this coding abomination upon an unsuspecting land? Winter is truly coming at last.<p>(Otherwise pretty neat)

To those playing: if you want to be able to find your code again later, go to the CodeCombat home page and sign up for a free account! Sorry, we derped out and didn&#x27;t put any signup form accessible from the Gridmancer level.<p>Also, we&#x27;re sorry that we left you without good debugging tools: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6976883" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6976883</a> -- this is the #1 problem uncovered today. We will retreat in tearful shame to our code lairs until we can blow your minds with our timeless debugger.<p>You are amazing players--so many good solutions here. Thanks for playing! To those who sent in solutions and are looking for dev opportunities, we&#x27;ll be in touch this weekend to see what we can do and learn about what you&#x27;re looking for.

I can&#x27;t play using Safari 7.0.1 on OS X 10.9.1. (And by &quot;can&#x27;t play&quot;, I mean I see the &quot;CodeCombat requires a modern browser to play&quot; screen.)<p>User agent: Mozilla&#x2F;5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_1) AppleWebKit&#x2F;537.73.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version&#x2F;7.0.1 Safari&#x2F;537.73.11

&gt; there aren&#x27;t enough programmers to meet the demand.<p>There aren&#x27;t enough good programmers to meet the demand for low paid programmers.

This seems pretty incredible that CodeCombat has already reached the point where they&#x27;re placing people into jobs. It&#x27;s supposed to be Codecademy&#x27;s goal [1] to do that eventually but they&#x27;ve been around much longer.<p>1. <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/codecademy-offers-free-coding-classes-for-aspiring-entrepreneurs/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bits.blogs.nytimes.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;09&#x2F;14&#x2F;codecademy-offers-f...</a>

SOLVED.<p>-29 rectangles<p>-O(N) worst-case complexity<p>-Under 200 lines<p><a href="https://gist.github.com/foxly/8168624" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;foxly&#x2F;8168624</a> <a href="http://imgur.com/PXcUEHz" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;PXcUEHz</a>

Shoutout to the gents at codecombat -- this is what hustle looks like.

A better way to look at the object&#x27;s structure&#x2F;values would help a lot. Seems like the first step would be to generate a list of vertices from the 2d array of tiles.

Just curious - would anyone here currently hiring consider the winning candidates any more than they would from a (reputable) recruiter?<p>I&#x27;m not trying to be a cynic - I really hope this works and solves a real problem. This is honest feedback from someone has and will continue to evaluate talent for technical teams - proof of algorithmic ability is only one tick mark of the dozens needed.

The blog post talks about minimizing count(rects) but the in-game comment only mentions having better than one rect per floor tile.<p>This second requirement is much simpler. One only needs to merge a single two rects into one rect to fulfil it. I assume this is a bug?<p>Edit: Sorry I didn&#x27;t read the original post well enough the first time. It gives the more practical goal of 40 rects or less.

It covers all of the little coins!<p><pre><code> this.addRect(0, 0, 200, 200);</code></pre>

It would be very nice to have a console.log&#x2F;dir style function that would let you inspect objects&#x2F;arrays. (Makes debugging significantly easier).<p>Also, any chances of expanding beyond California?

Hi. I took this challenge, asked for help in finding a job, and heard nothing back.<p>I could really use help as my resume is mostly Flash&#x2F;Actionscript related work, which is not in demand, and it&#x27;s difficult to convince the &quot;filtering&quot; HR reps that my skills are applicable to other languages. So if this proves that I can code, then I should be able to get a job?

&#x27;this&#x27; is quirky when you make your own functions. also Starcraft II runs more smoothly on my computer, no joke

This was a great way for me to get back into programming after the holiday break. Your optimal number seems off, though; I ended up with a solution in 27 rects:<p><a href="http://imgur.com/hAOLUaD" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;hAOLUaD</a>

It was all fun and games until chrome crashed and lost the code I was writing.

Why do you need 20+ screenshots of the game screen within less than a second?

40? That doesn&#x27;t even seem to be a challenge. Are you sure you want to recommend people that can&#x27;t get the optimal solution?

Why can&#x27;t someone make a test account first, and then replay the best answer much more quickly with their real account?