Course Structure

How to approach this course

Filipe Fortes, programmer and founder of Coda, once joked that debugging is like “being a detective in a crime movie” except we know exactly who did it because we’re the ones that did the programming! As we work through the puzzles in this course, it might help to picture ourselves as Sherlock Holmes, or any other famous detective trying to solve a mystery. We have found that debugging is easier to understand and more enjoyable with this mindset. With that in mind, have fun solving the brain teasers in this course—perhaps we might even learn a new trick or two.

We have found that things are easier to understand with this mindset, and the work is more enjoyable. So, with that in mind, have fun guessing the brain teasers in this course—perhaps you might even learn a new trick or two.

How this course is organized

The course contains 30 carefully designed brain teasers that will challenge us to find creative solutions. Each puzzle contains two parts. In the first part, we’ll look at a static code and guess the expected output. In the next part, we’ll have an executable code to run the puzzle and see the output. After this, we’ll find out why the program produces the result and how similar issues might affect the code in other programs.

Tip
Before moving on to the answer and explanation, go ahead and guess the output. After guessing, we encourage you to run the code, see the output yourself, and then read the solution and the explanation.