Rant HN: I hate hackerrank
>  Are we now at a point where an engineer should at all times be intimately familiar with competitive programming and codegolf techniques?<p>Yes, we are. Accepting that trend seems to be better than ignoring it.<p>There is one not-so-bad way to look at these programming challenges. In silicon valley, we live in a condition wherein the company could fail at any time. As a developer, most often, we have to learn something entirely new and ship the code for the business. Those challenges are quite enormous with lots of unknowns compared to these programming contest problems where it is just preparation. The general idea is, if a developer is diligent enough to prepare for these programming contest problems and delivers when required, he is probably going to be helpful as well when the business has a dire need.